ice; saw-like edges of ice carved by the
snow that flies before the wind; and sunken pits where thirty or forty
acres lay below the level of the rest of the field. From a little
distance you might have taken the lumps for seal or walrus, overturned
sleighs or men on a hunting expedition, or even the great Ten-legged
White Spirit-Bear himself; but in spite of these fantastic shapes, all
on the very edge of starting into life, there was neither sound nor the
least faint echo of sound. And through this silence and through this
waste, where the sudden lights flapped and went out again, the sleigh
and the two that pulled it crawled like things in a nightmare--a
nightmare of the end of the world at the end of the world.

When they were tired Kotuko would make what the hunters call a
"half-house," a very small snow hut, into which they would huddle with
the travelling-lamp, and try to thaw out the frozen seal-meat. When they
had slept, the march began again--thirty miles a day to get ten miles
northward. The girl was always very silent, but Kotuko muttered
to himself and broke out into songs he had learned in the
Singing-House--summer songs, and reindeer and salmon songs--all horribly
out of place at that season. He would declare that he heard the tornaq
growling to him, and would run wildly up a hummock, tossing his arms and
speaking in loud, threatening tones. To tell the truth, Kotuko was very
nearly crazy for the time being; but the girl was sure that he was being
guided by his guardian spirit, and that everything would come right.
She was not surprised, therefore, when at the end of the fourth march
Kotuko, whose eyes were burning like fire-balls in his head, told her
that his tornaq was following them across the snow in the shape of a
two-headed dog. The girl looked where Kotuko pointed, and something
seemed to slip into a ravine. It was certainly not human, but everybody
knew that the tornait preferred to appear in the shape of bear and seal,
and such like.

It might have been the Ten-legged White Spirit-Bear himself, or it might
have been anything, for Kotuko and the girl were so starved that their
eyes were untrustworthy. They had trapped nothing, and seen no trace of
game since they had left the village; their food would not hold out for
another week, and there was a gale coming. A Polar storm can blow for
ten days without a break, and all that while it is certain death to
be abroad. Kotuko laid up a snow-house larg