m by the sudden facings and savage growls of Guard, who valiantly
stemmed the canine avalanche. We met him about fifty yards from the
boat, and raised a loud hurrah.

"Into the boat with you!" Raed sang out to him.

The dogs howled and snarled viciously at us. Donovan cut at them with
his oar right and left; while Raed, Kit, and Wade levelled their
muskets at the horde of rushing, breathless savages, who seemed not to
have seen us at all till that moment, so intent had they been after
the negro. Discovering us, the front ones tried to pull up; and, those
behind running up, they were all crowded together, shouting and
screaming, and punching each other with their harpoons.

"Avast there!" shouted Donovan, flourishing his oar.

"Halt!" ordered Wade.

While Kit, remembering a word of Esquimaux, bade them "_Twau-ve_"
("Begone") at the top of his voice.

I must say that they were a wicked-looking lot,--the front ones, at
least,--comprising some of the largest Esquimaux we had yet seen.
There must have been thirty or forty in the front groups; and others
were momentarily rushing in from behind. The dogs, too, fifty or sixty
at least calculation,--great, gaunt, wolfish, yellow curs,--looked
almost as dangerous as their masters.

"We must get out of this!" exclaimed Raed; for they were beginning to
brandish their harpoons menacingly, and shout and howl still louder.

"If we turn, they'll set upon us before we can get into the boat!"
muttered Kit.

"Fire over their heads, to gain time!" shouted Wade. "Ready!"

The three muskets cracked. A great _ta-yar-r-r_ and screeching
followed the reports; under cover of which and the smoke we legged it
for the boat, and, tumbling in, were shoved hastily off by Weymouth.
Before we had got twenty yards, however, the savages were on the bank,
yelling, and throwing stones, several of which fell in among us; but
we were soon out of their reach.

"That's what I call a pretty close shave!" exclaimed Donovan, panting.

"We couldn't have stood against them much longer," said Kit. "I didn't
suppose they had so much ferocity about them. Those we saw down at the
middle islands were kittenish enough."

"These may belong to a different tribe," replied Raed.

Palmleaf, completely exhausted, lay all in a heap in the bow. We
pulled off to the schooner. The savages and their dogs kept up a
confused medley of howls and shouts: it was hard distinguishing the
human cries from the canine.

Cap