He humorously adds regarding his forceful language in ordering Mertuk back to the ship: "I will not swear that the vigorous words froze as they came from my mouth, but after I finished there were pendant icicles an inch long to my whiskers and mustache." As to Mertuk, orders, arguments, and requests, whether in pantomime English or in Danish-Eskimo dialect, would have utterly failed of effect, had she not been stirred by frequent allusions to her baby--Hans's child, who must be saved from danger of death. To the mother, cold, hunger, and privations were as naught. Long and bitter was the conflict in Mertuk's heart between her motherly affection and her wifely devotion. Should she do alone her duty to her infant, or should she put the child's life aside in her arctic quest for her missing hunter husband? To the last her heart was undecided. Now she turned to the north, taking a few steps toward the ship, then she flew back on the trail after the searching party, which had now moved onward. Finally, with a gesture as of despair at adverse and inexorable fate, she slowly took up her lonely march back to the ship--where food, warmth, and shelter awaited at least the child of Hans. On shipboard Mertuk did not cease to bewail her weakness in returning from the search until the very day when Hans, who by no means hastened his return, came back to fill her heart with that sweet content which was absolutely insured by his presence alone. By modern standards this woman of the stone age was low in the scale of humanity--uncouth, ignorant, a heathen, and even brutish in a way. This tale of an Inuit girl is, however, but a loose leaf from the history of woman, which indicates that the spirit of altruistic devotion is an attribute implanted by God in the primitive races, and not, as some would fain have us believe, the golden fruit of developed humanity. A century since an American poet paid due homage to a beautiful belle, who later became his wife, in verse that aptly depicts the lovable traits of Mertuk, the daughter of Shung-hu. "Affections are as thoughts to her, The measures of her hours; Her feelings have the fragrancy, The freshness of the flowers." FOOTNOTES: [30] See map on page 95. [31] The raised bench or platform of stone, earth, or snow, in the back part of the igloo, on which the furs and skins are arranged for bedding. [32] Kane says of him: "I obtained an Eskimo hunter at Fiskernaes, one Hans Christian (known elsewhere as Hans Hendrik), a boy of eighteen, an expert with the kayak and javelin. After Hans had given me a touch of his quality by spearing a bird on the wing, I engaged him. He was fat, good-natured, and except under the excitements of the hunt as stolid and unimpressive as one of our Indians." THE SCRIBNER SERIES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE EACH WITH ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOR BOOKS FOR BOYS