The captain ordered a bucket of hardtack brought out in honor of our guests. The biscuit were dumped in a pile on the main deck. The Eskimos gathered around in a solemn and dignified circle. The old men divided the bread, giving an equal number of hardtack to each. This ceremony of welcome over, the Eskimos were given the freedom of the ship, or at least, took it. We kept a careful watch upon them, however, to see that they took nothing else. Several of the Eskimo men had a sufficient smattering of English to make themselves understood. They had picked up their small vocabulary among the whalers which every spring put in at the little ports along the Siberian and Alaskan coasts. One of them had been whaling to the Arctic Ocean aboard a whale ship which some accident had left short handed. He spoke better English than any of the others and was evidently regarded by his fellow townsmen as a wonderfully intellectual person. He became quite friendly with me, showing his friendship by begging me to give him almost everything I had, from tobacco to clothes. He constantly used an Eskimo word the meaning of which all whalers have learned and it assisted him materially in telling his stories--he was a great story teller. This word was "_pau_,"--it means "nothing." I never knew before how important nothing could be in human language. Here is a sample of his use of "nothing:" [Illustration: Callers from Asia] "Winter," he said, "sun pau; daylight pau. All dark. Water pau; all ice. Land pau, all snow. Eskimo igloo, plenty fire. Moss in blubber oil all time blaze up. Cold pau. Plenty hot. Eskimo, he sweat. Clothes pau. Good time. Hot time. Eat plenty. Sleep." This seemed to me a good, vivid description. The picture was there, painted chiefly with "nothing." Of course he had the English words "yes" and "no" in his assortment, but his way of using them was pure Eskimo. For instance: "You wear no clothes in winter?" I asked him. "No," he replied. "No?" I echoed in surprise. "Yes," he said. His "yes" merely affirmed his "no." It sometimes required a devious mental process to follow him. A pretty girl came up to me with a smile and an ingratiating air. "Tobac," she said holding out her hand. I handed her my smoking plug. She took half of it at one cavernous bite and gave the remainder back to me, which I thought considerate. She enjoyed the tobacco. She chewed upon it hard, working her jaws as if she were masticating a dainty tidbit. Did she expectorate? Not a drop. She evidently did not propose to waste any of the flavor of that good weed. Neither did she get sick--that pretty Eskimo girl. At last when she had chewed for twenty minutes or so, she removed her quid and stuck it behind her right ear. She chewed it at intervals later on, always between times wearing it conspicuously behind her ear.