“Me got to mush.  Show nex’ time.  Mush!”

“What’s here?” the Boy shouted through the “mushing”; and he tugged at the goodly load, so neatly disposed under an old reindeer-skin sleeping-bag, and lashed down with raw hide.

That?  Oh, that was fish. "Fish! Got so much fish at starving Pymeut you can go hauling it down river?  Well, sir, we want fish.  We must have fish.  Hey?” The Boy appealed to the others.

“Yes.”

“R-right y’arre!”

“I reckon we just do!”

But Nicholas had other views.

“No, me take him—­” He hitched his body in the direction of Ikogimeut.

“Bless my soul! you’ve got enough there for a regiment.  You goin’ to sell him?  Hey?”

Nicholas shook his head.

“Oh, come off the roof!” advised the Boy genially.

“You ain’t carryin’ it about for your health, I suppose?” said Potts.

“The people down at Ikogimeut don’t need it like us.  We’re white duffers, and can’t get fish through the ice.  You sell some of it to us.”  But Nicholas shook his head and shuffled along on his snow-shoes, beckoning the dog-driver to follow.

“Or trade some fur—­fur tay,” suggested O’Flynn.

“Or for sugar,” said Mac.

“Or for tobacco,” tempted the Colonel.

And before that last word Nicholas’s resolve went down.  Up at the cabin he unlashed the load, and it quickly became manifest that Nicholas was a dandy at driving a bargain.  He kept on saying shamelessly: 

“More—­more shuhg.  Hey?  Oh yes, me give heap fish.  No nuff shuhg.”

If it hadn’t been for Mac (his own clear-headed self again, and by no means to be humbugged by any Prince alive) the purchase of a portion of that load of frozen fish, corded up like so much wood, would have laid waste the commissariat.

But if the white men after this passage did not feel an absolute confidence in Nicholas’s fairness of mind, no such unworthy suspicion of them found lodgment in the bosom of the Prince.  With the exception of some tobacco, he left all his ill-gotten store to be kept for him by his new friends till he should return.  When was that to be?  In five sleeps he would be back.

“Good!  We’ll have the stockade done by then.  What do you say to our big chimney, Nicholas?”

He emitted a scornful “Peeluck!”

“What!  Our chimney no good?”

He shrugged:  “Why you have so tall hole your house?  How you cover him up?”

“We don’t want to cover him up.”

“Humph! winter fin’ you tall hole.  Winter come down—­bring in snow—­drive fire out.”  He shivered in anticipation of what was to happen.  “Peeluck!”

The white men laughed.

“What you up to now?  Where you going?”

Well, the fact was, Nicholas had been sent by his great ally, the Father Superior of Holy Cross, on a mission, very important, demanding despatch.