noise sounded as if following me, and kept
on louder and louder till I reached home, dashed myself, out of breath,
against the door, and rushed in to where my father and mother were
sitting with the window open listening, as I thought, for me. In a
moment I'd banged to and barred the door, and then I turned to my
father.

"`Shut the window,' I said. `Quick! they're coming in.'

"`What are?' said my father.

"`I don't know. I think it's a pack of wolves,' I panted as I sank in a
chair. `Get the gun.'

"`Oh yes,' said my father. `Perhaps it is flying wolves with feathers
instead of fur coats, and they were after you to eat you.'

"`Yes, father,' I said, `I thought so.'

"`Then don't be such a bull goose again,' said my father. `Here,
mother, try and teach this boy to think better, and not go and believe
that every sound he hears is all troll and hobgoblin. Feathered wolves
that fly, eh, Johannes? That kind of fowl has not been hatched yet, my
boy. Now, the next time you hear a flight of fowl going south in the
night, you'll know better, won't you?'

"I said, `Yes, father,' very sharply, for I was horribly ashamed of
having been frightened at the flight of wild fowl; but I didn't know any
better, and it was very dark, like to-night; and it is startling to hear
such sounds when you don't know what they are."

"Yes, very," said Steve consciously.

"Why, if the lad Watty had been on deck, I don't know what kind of
creature he would have thought it was. Hark!" he whispered, for Skene
uttered another low whine. "Here they are again, sir. This frost has
started them in a hurry. Yes; geese this time."

For from out of the black darkness ahead came a long-drawn, weird,
clanging noise, growing louder and louder till it swept over their heads
and into the distance, hushed, as it were, by the whir and whistle of
the heavy pinions beating the air.

"The captain was right," said Johannes after they had listened for a
time. "There is nothing like laying in a store when you have the
chance. We shall have to go far enough now to pick up a few birds for
some months to come."

The wild-geese flight passed over, and the walk up and down the deck was
resumed; and now Steve noted that the aurora was growing paler, with the
effect of making the stars shine out more brightly. Then all at once
the strange glow sank down lower and lower, and then disappeared as the
glow cast upon a cloud of mist disappears when the