Ross smiled his charming smile. “Same fella.”

“They told us about this dance back there at the place we’re staying. You run these dances?”

“No.” Agreeably he went into a polite explanation. “Usually the dances don’t start as early in the season as this because the tourists aren’t here. They run them every evening in the season.” With a gesture he indicated the dancers and the drummers. “They make a little money this way. So I rounded up an audience.”

Bridie took over. “It’s real interesting, isn’t it? Specially if you haven’t seen Eskimo dancing before. I’ve seen it a lot of times. But it’s real interesting—for a little while, that is.”

Alwin Polar now surveyed the slowly shifting gesticulating group with the coldly appraising eye of the professional.

“Twenty-five years ago they could have made it, maybe, on the small time, snappier costumes, of course, white fur and so on for the women. But the whole act needs pepping up. Variety. Pace.”

Now Thor, his tone kindly, his eyes amused, took up the impromptu explanation on a more scholarly note. “Eskimos never used to dance for money. It started as a ceremony, they danced to express themselves. This kind of public entertainment came with the tourist trade. These dances act out a story. Every gesture of the arms, the head, the feet has a meaning. Every gesture follows the story the drummers are chanting.”

“You mean they’re saying something—those men there with the drums?” Polar turned to Ross. “You understood what they’re saying? What’s it mean?”

Ross was silent a moment, he turned away from the clumsy friendly man and his well-meaning wife. His attention concentrated on the drummers and on the women’s chorus seated on the floor behind them; on the stylized postures of the dancers. Years later Christine was to see the performance of a group of touring Balinese dancers in a New York theater and realize that their movements, form, even characteristics were akin to this dancing Eskimo group now weaving a dream story across the floor of the shabby Arctic hall.

Now Ross turned back to the tourists. Chris was startled by the curiously protective maternal feeling that surged through her as she looked at the merry upturned face, the laughing eyes.

“It sounds kind of foolish when you tell it, a literal translation. Well, this hunter went out to get food for his wife and his children, they had had no food for days because the man had been pierced weeks before by the tusks of a walrus when the man was on the sea in his kayak. And now as he walked toward the sea he saw a wolf, but as he prepared to kill the wolf the wolf turned into a caribou with antlers and it sped toward the water and as it ran the hunter saw that the antlers were turning into tusks like those of a walrus and he knew then—–” Ross broke off, his smile a little rueful. “Well, you get the idea. It wouldn’t interest you very much. Tribal stories never are very interesting.”