Publisher's Synopsis
Breakfast eaten and the slim camp-outfit lashed to the sled, the men turned their backs on thecheery fire and launched out into the darkness. At once began to rise the cries that were fiercelysad-cries that called through the darkness and cold to one another and answeredback. Conversation ceased. Daylight came at nine o'clock. At midday the sky to the south warmedto rose-colour, and marked where the bulge of the earth intervened between the meridian sun andthe northern world. But the rose-colour swiftly faded. The grey light of day that remained lasteduntil three o'clock, when it, too, faded, and the pall of the Arctic night descended upon the lone andsilent land.As darkness came on, the hunting-cries to right and left and rear drew closer-so close that morethan once they sent surges of fear through the toiling dogs, throwing them into short-lived panics.At the conclusion of one such panic, when he and Henry had got the dogs back in the traces, Billsaid: "I wisht they'd strike game somewheres, an' go away an' leave us alone.""They do get on the nerves horrible," Henry sympathised.They spoke no more until camp was made.Henry was bending over and adding ice to the babbling pot of beans when he was startled by thesound of a blow, an exclamation from Bill, and a sharp snarling cry of pain from among thedogs. He straightened up in time to see a dim form disappearing across the snow into the shelter ofthe dark. Then he saw Bill, standing amid the dogs, half triumphant, half crestfallen, in one hand astout club, in the other the tail and part of the body of a sun-cured salmon."It got half of it," he announced; "but I got a whack at it jes' the same. D'ye hear it squeal?""What'd it look like?" Henry asked."Couldn't see. But it had four legs an' a mouth an' hair an' looked like any dog.""Must be a tame wolf, I reckon.""It's damned tame, whatever it is, comin' in here at feedin' time an' gettin' its whack of fish."That night, when supper was finished and they sat on the oblong box and pulled at their pipes, thecircle of gleaming eyes drew in even closer than before