with his team. His leader suddenly halted.

"Muk-a-muk!" cried the Eskimo.

"Muk!" echoed Punni Churah, running up alongside to look, and then back
to the captain's sled, where he shouted something loudly in order to be
heard above the storm.

An ice crack crossed their trail. There was no help for it. There it
lay, dark and cold--the dreaded water.

In the blinding blizzard they could not see the width of the chasm. It
was too wide for them to bridge; it was death to remain where they
were--they must turn back, and they did so. The wind was not now in
their faces as before, which made traveling some easier, but they had
not gone far when: "Muk-a-muk!" from Punni this time, who was ahead.

Again the dogs stopped. Again Punni Churah came back, and reported.

They were adrift on a cake of ice. Wind from the northeast was blowing a
hurricane, carrying them on their ice cake directly out to sea; but the
snow was drifting in hummocks, and in one of them the natives began
digging a hole for a hut. When this was of sufficient size, they pitched
a sled cover of canvas over it, made the sleighs fast outside, and
crawled underneath. Once inside their temporary igloo, they made a fire
of white drilling and bacon, taken from the sled loads of merchandise;
melted snow for water, and boiled coffee, being nearly famished. Then
for hours they all slept heavily, the dogs being huddled together in the
snow, as is their habit, but the blizzard raged frightfully, and drove
the dogs nearer the men in the hut.

Crawling upon the canvas for more warmth, the poor, freezing creatures,
struggling for shelter, with the weight of their bodies caused the hut
to collapse, and all fell, in one writhing heap, upon the heads of the
unfortunates below. Howling, barking, struggling to free themselves from
the tangle, the pack of brutes added torment to the lot of the men; but
the storm raged with such terrific force that all lay as they fell,
until morning, under the snow.

None now disputed the storm king's sway. All were laid low before him.
With the united fury of fiends of Hades, he laughed in demoniacal glee
at the desperation of the Arctic travelers under his heel. The whole
world was now his. Far from the icy and unknown wastes of the interior,
around the great Circle and Rockies, riding above the heads of rivers
and mountains, he came from the Koyuk and Koyukuk. Like a child at play,
as if weary of so long holding them in his cold embrac