“He think white men bring plague, bring devils.”

“Got some money?” whispered Muckluck.

“Not here.”

The Boy saw the moment when he would be turned out.  He plunged his hands down into his trousers pockets and fished up a knife, his second-best one, fortunately.

“Tell him I’m all right, and he can give this to Yukon Inua with my respects.”

Muckluck explained and held up the shining object, blades open, corkscrew curling attractively before the covetous eyes of the Shaman.  When he could endure the temptation no longer his two black claws shot out, but Nicholas intercepted the much-envied object, while, as it seemed, he drove a more advantageous bargain.  Terms finally settled, the Shaman seized the knife, shut it, secreted it with a final grunt, and stood up.

Everyone made way for him.  He jerked his loosely-jointed body over to the sick man, lifted the seal-oil lamp with his shaky old hands, and looked at the patient long and steadily.  When he had set the lamp down again, with a grunt, he put his black thumb on the wick and squeezed out the light.  When he came back to the fire, which had burnt low, he pulled open his parki and drew out an ivory wand, and a long eagle’s feather with a fluffy white tuft of some sort at the end.  He deposited these solemnly, side by side, on the ground, about two feet apart.

Turning round to the dying fire, he took a stick, and with Nicholas’s help gathered the ashes up and laid them over the smouldering brands.

The ighloo was practically dark.  No one dared speak save the yet unabashed devil in the sick man, who muttered angrily.  It was curious to see how the coughing of the others, which in the Kachime had been practically constant, was here almost silenced.  Whether this was achieved through awe and respect for the Shaman, or through nervous absorption in the task he had undertaken, who shall say?

The Boy felt rather than saw that the Shaman had lain down between the ivory wand and the eagle’s feather.  Each man sat as still as death, listening, staring, waiting.

Presently a little jet of flame sprang up out of the ashes.  The Shaman lifted his head angrily, saw it was no human hand that had dared turn on the light, growled, and pulled something else from under his inexhaustible parki.  The Boy peered curiously.  The Shaman seemed to be shutting out the offensive light by wrapping himself up in something, head and all.

“What’s he doing now?” the Boy ventured to whisper under cover of the devil’s sudden loud remonstrance, the sick man at this point breaking into ghastly groans.

“He puts on the Kamlayka.  Sh!”

The Shaman, still enveloped head and body, began to beat softly, keeping time with the eagle’s feather.  You could follow the faint gleam of the ivory wand, but on what it fell with that hollow sound no eye could see.  Now, at intervals, he uttered a cry, a deep bass danger-note, singularly unnerving.  Someone answered in a higher key, and they kept this up in a kind of rude, sharply-timed duet, till one by one the whole group of natives was gathered into the swing of it, swept along involuntarily, it would seem, by some magnetic attraction of the rhythm.