le
that others have forced on us."

Nancy inclined her head.

"I'd forgotten," she said almost humbly. "But you have no women folk
around you," she went on urgently a moment later. "Does war mean
that--that I must submit even--to that?"

It was the woman in her that had taken alarm. Her hands were pressed
together as she held them over the stove. The man understood. She moved
away to the window, over which the curtains had not been drawn, and Bull
watched her.

"Every respect will be paid you," he said. "You've nothing to fear. When
Gouter returns he'll get food, and we'll make the best preparations we
can. I've to consider others with more at stake than even I."

"Look!"

The girl had turned. Her eyes were wide with terror. She was pointing at
the window, and Bull hurried to her side.

A great fire was raging on the north shore of the Cove. It was the
recreation room, that room which Bat had so bitterly come to hate. It
was ablaze from end to end, and lit up its neighbourhood so that the
scene was of daylight clearness. A horde of human figures were gathered
about it, in a struggling, seething mass, and the man realised that a
battle was raging, a human battle, whilst the demon of fire was left to
work its will.

He stood there, held speechless by the thing he beheld.

"What is it? What does it mean?"

Panic drove the questions to the girl's lips. And she turned in an agony
of appeal to the man beside her.

"It means the work of the Skandinavia has been well and truly done."

CHAPTER XXII

DAWN

The hush of dawn was unbroken. The shadows of night receded slowly,
reluctantly renouncing their long reign in favour of the brief winter
daylight. The shores of the Cove lay hidden under a haze of fog.

There were no sounds of life. The world was desperately still. No cry of
wild fowl rose to greet the day. There was not even the doleful cry of
belated wolf, or the snapping bark of foraging coyote to indicate those
conditions of life which never change in the northern wilderness. It was
as if the world of snow and ice were waking to a day of complete
mourning, a day of bitter reckoning for the tumult of furious human
passions, which, under the cloak of night, had been loosed to work the
evil of men's will.

With the first gleam of the rising sun a breeze leapt out of the east.
It came with an edge like the keenest knife, and ripped the fog to
ribbons. It churned and tangled it. Then it flung it cl