shudderingly against his breast, as if sobbing. How many times he
kissed her in those moments Philip could not have told. It must have
been a great many. He knew only that her arms were clinging tighter and
tighter about his neck, and that she was whispering his name, and that
his hands were buried in her soft hair. He forgot time, forgot the
possible cost of precious seconds lost. It was a small thing that
recalled him to his senses. From out of a spruce top a handful of snow
fell on his shoulder. It startled him like the touch of a strange hand,
and in another moment he was explaining swiftly to Celie that there
were other enemies near and that they must lose no time in flight.

He fastened one of the pouches at his waist, picked up his club,
and--on second thought--one of the Kogmollock javelins. He had no very
definite idea of how he might use the latter weapon, as it was too
slender to be of much avail as a spear at close quarters. At a dozen
paces he might possibly throw it with some degree of accuracy. In a
Kogmollock's hand it was a deadly weapon at a hundred paces. With the
determination to be at his side when the next fight came Celie
possessed herself of a second javelin. With her hand in his Philip set
out then due north through the forest.

It was in that direction he knew the cabin must lay. After striking the
edge of the timber after crossing the Barren Bram Johnson had turned
almost directly south, and as he remembered the last lap of the journey
Philip was confident that not more than eight or ten miles had
separated the two cabins. He regretted now his carelessness in not
watching Brain's trail more closely in that last hour or two. His chief
hope of finding the cabin was in the discovery of some landmark at the
edge of the Barren. He recalled distinctly where they had turned into
the forest, and in less than half an hour after that they had come upon
the first cabin.

Their immediate necessity was not so much the finding of the cabin as
escape from the Eskimos. Within half an hour, perhaps even less, he
believed that other eyes would know of the fight at the edge of the
open. It was inevitable. If the Kogmollocks on either side of them
struck the trail before it reached the open they would very soon run
upon the dead, and if they came upon footprints in the snow this side
of the open they would back-trail swiftly to learn the source and
meaning of the cry of triumph that had not repeated itself. C