. Let us hurry!" "Where?" she asked, sitting up, and ceasing from
her strange mirth.

'"To Akatan," I answered, intent on the light to grow on her face at
the thought. But it became like his, with a sneer to the lips, and cold
anger.

'"Yes," she said; "we will go, hand in hand, to Akatan, you and I. And
we will live in the dirty huts, and eat of the fish and oil, and bring
forth a spawn--a spawn to be proud of all the days of our life. We will
forget the world and be happy, very happy. It is good, most good. Come!
Let us hurry. Let us go back to Akatan." And she ran her hand through
his yellow hair, and smiled in a way which was not good. And there was
no promise in her eyes.

'I sat silent, and marveled at the strangeness of woman. I went back to
the night when he dragged her from me and she screamed and tore at his
hair--at his hair which now she played with and would not leave. Then I
remembered the price and the long years of waiting; and I gripped her
close, and dragged her away as he had done. And she held back, even as
on that night, and fought like a she-cat for its whelp. And when the
fire was between us and the man. I loosed her, and she sat and
listened. And I told her of all that lay between, of all that had
happened to me on strange seas, of all that I had done in strange
lands; of my weary quest, and the hungry years, and the promise which
had been mine from the first. Aye, I told all, even to what had passed
that day between the man and me, and in the days yet young. And as I
spoke I saw the promise grow in her eyes, full and large like the break
of dawn. And I read pity there, the tenderness of woman, the love, the
heart and the soul of Unga. And I was a stripling again, for the look
was the look of Unga as she ran up the beach, laughing, to the home of
her mother. The stern unrest was gone, and the hunger, and the weary
waiting.

'The time was met. I felt the call of her breast, and it seemed there I
must pillow my head and forget. She opened her arms to me, and I came
against her. Then, sudden, the hate flamed in her eye, her hand was at
my hip. And once, twice, she passed the knife.

'"Dog!" she sneered, as she flung me into the snow. "Swine!" And then
she laughed till the silence cracked, and went back to her dead.

'As I say, once she passed the knife, and twice; but she was weak with
hunger, and it was not meant that I should die. Yet was I minded to
stay in that place, and to close my eyes