The tidbit of
the Eskimo was birds' eggs, gathered by the ton in summer-time, rotten
before cold weather came, and frozen solid as chunks of ice in winter.
Through one starvation period of three weeks he had lived on them
himself, crunching them raw in his mouth as one worries away with a
piece of rock candy. The little lines gathered in Mary Josephine's
forehead at this, but they smoothed away into laughter when he
humorously described the joy of living on nothing at all but air. And
he added to this by telling her how the gluttonous Eskimo at feast-time
would lie out flat on their backs so that their womenfolk could feed
them by dropping chunks of flesh into their open maws until their
stomachs swelled up like the crops of birds overstuffed with grain.
It was a successful breakfast. When it was over, Keith felt that he had
achieved a great deal. Before they rose from the table, he startled
Mary Josephine by ordering Wallie to bring him a cold chisel and a
hammer from Brady's tool-chest.
"I've lost the key that opens my chest, and I've got to break in," he
explained to her.
Mary Josephine's little laugh was delicious. "After what you told me
about frozen eggs, I thought perhaps you were going to eat some," she
said.
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