McCormick had been at work as well on the inside as on the outside of the vessel. The temporary house had been removed from the upper deck, and the decks, and bulwarks, and cabins, and forecastle had been furbished up; and, after all this spring house-cleaning, the little schooner looked as neat and tidy as if she had never been besmeared with the soot and lamp-smoke of the long winter. The men were setting up the rigging; the bow-sprit, and jib-boom, and foretop-mast had been repaired; the yards had been sent aloft; the masts were being scraped down; and a little paint and tar fairly made our craft shine again. The sailors had moved from the hold to their natural quarters in the forecastle; and Dodge was busy getting off and stowing away the contents of the store-house, except such articles as I had proposed leaving behind, which were carefully deposited in a fissure of a rock, and covered over with heavy stones. [Sidenote: A CHIEF WAXED FAT.] The Esquimaux still hung round us. Tcheitchenguak had set up a tent on the terrace, and had for a companion a new-comer, named Alatak, and for house-keeper a woman, who appeared to have a roving commission, without special claim on anybody, and whom I had seen before at Booth Bay, where she figured among my companions as "The Sentimental Widow." Hans had gone, with his family, up to Chester Valley, where he was catching auks by hundreds, and living in the seal-skin tent that he brought from Cape York. Angeit still prowled round the galley and pantry, and continued, alternately, to annoy and amuse the cook and still stoutly to resist the steward's efforts at conversion. Kalutunah, my jolly old chief, held on at Etah, and looked to my abundant commissariat and fruitful bounty as the source of all human bliss. He had grown so rich that he did not know where to put all his wealth; and when I went over to Etah to look after him, I found him waxing fat on laziness, and stupid with over-feeding. I discovered him lounging behind a rock, basking in the warm sunshine, like the monk in the "Monastery," sitting before the fire, "thinking of nothing." He was much rejoiced at seeing me again, asked me many questions about my journey, and where I had been; said that he had never been so happy in all his life before; and he stole the thoughts, if not the Spanish, of honest Sancho, in his emphatic declaration, "You have filled my belly, and therefore have won my heart." I was sorry to have but one dog; to restore to him of the eight with which he had supplied me; but he declared himself satisfied. He appeared, at first, strongly to fear that, in returning his dog, I was withdrawing my support, and was much gratified when I told him to come over and get as much food as he could carry away. [Sidenote: TRACES OF ESQUIMAUX.]