It was not to be denied that Kaviak loved sugar mightily, and stole it when he could.  Mac lectured him and slapped his minute yellow hands, and Kaviak stole it all the same.  When he was bad—­that is, when he had eaten his daily fill of the camp’s scanty store (in such a little place it was not easy to hide from such a hunter as Kaviak)—­he was taken down to the Little Cabin, smacked, and made to say “Ow Farva.”  Nobody could discover that he minded much, though he learnt to try to shorten the ceremony by saying “I solly” all the way to the cabin.

As a rule he was strangely undemonstrative; but in his own grave little fashion he conducted life with no small intelligence, and learned, with an almost uncanny quickness, each man’s uses from the Kaviak point of view.  The only person he wasn’t sworn friends with was the handy-man, and there came to be a legend current in the camp, that Kaviak’s first attempt at spontaneously stringing a sentence under that roof was, “Me got no use for Potts.”

The best thing about Kaviak was that his was no craven soul.  He was obliged to steal the sugar because he lived with white people who were bigger than he, and who always took it away when they caught him.  But once the sugar was safe under his shirt, he owned up without the smallest hesitation, and took his smacking like a man.  For the rest, he flourished, filled out, and got as fat as a seal, but never a whit less solemn.

One morning the Colonel announced that now the days had grown so short, and the Trio were so late coming to breakfast, and nobody did any work to speak of, it would be a good plan to have only two meals a day.

The motion was excessively unpopular, but it was carried by a plain, and somewhat alarming, exposition of the state of supplies.

“We oughtn’t to need as much food when we lazy round the fire all day,” said the Colonel.  But Potts retorted that they’d need a lot more if they went on adoptin’ the aborigines.

They knocked off supper, and all but the aborigine knew what it meant sometimes to go hungry to bed.

Towards the end of dinner one day late in December, when everybody else had finished except for coffee and pipe, the aborigine held up his empty plate.

“Haven’t you had enough?” asked the Colonel mildly, surprised at Kaviak’s bottomless capacity.

“Maw.”  Still the plate was extended.

“There isn’t a drop of syrup left,” said Potts, who had drained the can, and even wiped it out carefully with halves of hot biscuit.

“He don’t really want it.”

“Mustn’t open a fresh can till to-morrow.”

“No, sir_ee_.  We’ve only got—­”

“Besides, he’ll bust.”

Kaviak meanwhile, during this paltry discussion, had stood up on the high stool “Farva” had made for him, and personally inspected the big mush-pot.  Then he turned to Mac, and, pointing a finger like a straw (nothing could fatten those infinitesimal hands), he said gravely and fluently: