Red Rooney, by R.M. Ballantyne

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Title: Red Rooney The Last of the Crew

Author: R.M. Ballantyne

Release Date: June 6, 2007 [EBook #21696]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RED ROONEY ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

RED ROONEY, BY R.M. BALLANTYNE.

A Tale of Eskimo (Innuit) Life in Greenland at the end of the Eighteenth Century.

CHAPTER ONE.

THE LAST OF THE CREW.

LOST AND FOUND.

There is a particular spot in those wild regions which lie somewhere near the northern parts of Baffin's Bay, where Nature seems to have set up her workshop for the manufacture of icebergs, where Polar bears, in company with seals and Greenland whales, are wont to gambol, and where the family of Jack Frost may be said to have taken permanent possession of the land.

One winter day, in the early part of the eighteenth century, a solitary man might have been seen in that neighbourhood, travelling on foot over the frozen sea in a staggering, stumbling, hurried manner, as if his powers, though not his will, were exhausted.

The man's hairy garb of grey sealskin might have suggested that he was a denizen of those northern wilds, had not the colour of his face, his brown locks, and

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