nst that horde of beasts! They would stop them no more than so many
pin-pricks. And what even would the club avail? Against two or three he
might put up a fight. But against seven--

He cursed Bram under his breath. It was curious that in that same
instant the thought flashed upon him that the wolf-man might not have
fallen a victim to the Eskimos. Was it not possible that the spying
Kogmollocks had seen him go away on the hunt, and had taken advantage
of the opportunity to attack the cabin? They had evidently thought
their task would be an easy one. What Philip saw through the window set
his pulse beating quickly with the belief that this last conjecture was
the true one. The world outside was turning dark. The sky was growing
thick and low. In half an hour a storm would break. The Eskimos had
foreseen that storm. They knew that the trail taken in their flight,
after they had possessed themselves of the girl, would very soon be
hidden from the eyes of Bram and the keen scent of his wolves. So they
had taken the chance--the chance to make Celie their prisoner before
Bram returned.

And why, Philip asked himself, did these savage little barbarians of
the north want HER? The fighting she had pictured for him had not
startled him. For a long time the Kogmollocks had been making trouble.
In the last year they had killed a dozen white men along the upper
coast, including two American explorers and a missionary. Three patrols
had been sent to Coronation Gulf and Bathurst Inlet since August. With
the first of those patrols, headed by Olaf Anderson, the Swede, he had
come within an ace of going himself. A rumor had come down to Churchill
just before he left for the Barrens that Olaf's party of five men had
been wiped out. It was not difficult to understand why the Eskimos had
attacked Celie Armin's father and those who had come ashore with him
from the ship. It was merely a question of lust for white men's blood
and white men's plunder, and strangers in their country would naturally
be regarded as easy victims. The mysterious and inexplicable part of
the affair was their pursuit of the girl. In this pursuit the
Kogmollocks had come far beyond the southernmost boundary of their
hunting grounds. Philip was sufficiently acquainted with the Eskimos to
know that in their veins ran very little of the red-blooded passion of
the white man. Matehood was more of a necessity imposed by nature than
a joy in their existence, and it was imp