And then—­But I have wandered from my text.  How did I get out of my second lie?  I think I got out with honour, but I cannot be sure, for it was a long time ago and some of the details have faded out of my memory.  I recollect that I was reversed and stretched across some one’s knee, and that something happened, but I cannot now remember what it was.  I think there was music; but it is all dim now and blurred by the lapse of time, and this may be only a senile fancy.

THE ESQUIMAUX MAIDEN’S ROMANCE

’Yes, I will tell you anything about my life that you would like to know, Mr. Twain,’ she said, in her soft voice, and letting her honest eyes rest placidly upon my face, ’for it is kind and good of you to like me and care to know about me.’

She had been absently scraping blubber-grease from her cheeks with a small bone-knife and transferring it to her fur sleeve, while she watched the Aurora Borealis swing its flaming streamers out of the sky and wash the lonely snow plain and the templed icebergs with the rich hues of the prism, a spectacle of almost intolerable splendour and beauty; but now she shook off her reverie and prepared to give me the humble little history I had asked for.  She settled herself comfortably on the block of ice which we were using as a sofa, and I made ready to listen.

She was a beautiful creature.  I speak from the Esquimaux point of view.  Others would have thought her a trifle over-plump.  She was just twenty years old, and was held to be by far the most bewitching girl in her tribe.  Even now, in the open air, with her cumbersome and shapeless fur coat and trousers and boots and vast hood, the beauty of her face was at least apparent; but her figure had to be taken on trust.  Among all the guests who came and went, I had seen no girl at her father’s hospitable trough who could be called her equal.  Yet she was not spoiled.  She was sweet and natural and sincere, and if she was aware that she was a belle, there was nothing about her ways to show that she possessed that knowledge.

She had been my daily comrade for a week now, and the better I knew her the better I liked her.  She had been tenderly and carefully brought up, in an atmosphere of singularly rare refinement for the polar regions, for her father was the most important man of his tribe and ranked at the top of Esquimaux civilisation.  I made long dog-sledge trips across the mighty ice floes with Lasca—­that was her name—­and found her company always pleasant and her conversation agreeable.  I went fishing with her, but not in her perilous boat:  I merely followed along on the ice and watched her strike her game with her fatally accurate spear.  We went sealing together; several times I stood by while she and the family dug blubber from a stranded whale, and once I went part of the way when she was hunting a bear, but turned back before the finish, because at bottom I am afraid of bears.