tand, and things he
could love. And then Wapi would whine, and perhaps the whine would
bring him the blow of a club, or the lash of a whip, or an Eskimo
threat, or the menace of an Eskimo dog's snarl. Of the latter Wapi was
unafraid. With a snap of his jaws, he could break the back of any other
dog on Franklin Bay.

Such was Wapi, the Walrus, when for two sacks of flour, some tobacco,
and a bale of cloth he became the property of Blake, the
uta-wawe-yinew, the trader in seals, whalebone--and women. On this day
Wapi's soul took its flight back through the space of forty years. For
Blake was white, which is to say that at one time or another he had
been white. His skin and his appearance did not betray how black he had
turned inside and Wapi's brute soul cried out to him, telling him how
he had waited and watched for this master he knew would come, how he
would fight for him, how he wanted to lie down and put his great head
on the white man's feet in token of his fealty. But Wapi's bloodshot
eyes and battle-scarred face failed to reveal what was in him, and
Blake--following the instructions of those who should know--ruled him
from the beginning with a club that was more brutal than the club of
the Eskimo.

For three months Wapi had been the property of Blake, and it was now
the dead of a long and sunless arctic night. Blake's cabin, built of
ship timber and veneered with blocks of ice, was built in the face of a
deep pit that sheltered it from wind and storm. To this cabin came the
Nanatalmutes from the east, and the Kogmollocks from the west,
bartering their furs and whalebone and seal-oil for the things Blake
gave in exchange, and adding women to their wares whenever Blake
announced a demand. The demand had been excellent this winter. Over in
Darnley Bay, thirty miles across the headland, was the whaler Harpoon
frozen up for the winter with a crew of thirty men, and straight out
from the face of his igloo cabin, less than a mile away, was the Flying
Moon with a crew of twenty more. It was Blake's business to wait and
watch like a hawk for such opportunities as there, and tonight--his
watch pointed to the hour of twelve, midnight--he was sitting in the
light of a sputtering seal-oil lamp adding up figures which told him
that his winter, only half gone, had already been an enormously
profitable one.

"If the Mounted Police over at Herschel only knew," he chuckled. "Uppy,
if they did, they'd have an outfit after us in