to
her anchor, veering nervously in the tide rip, tugging impatiently and
clanking her chains as if eager to be out again in the turmoil. At
sunset the gale blew itself out, and presently the moon wheeled full and
clear over the dark mountains.

Noel, my big Indian, was curled up asleep in a caribou skin by the
foremast; and the crew were all below asleep, every man glad in his
heart to be once more safe in a snug harbor. All about us stretched the
desolate wastes of sea and mountains, over which silence and darkness
brooded, as over the first great chaos. Near at hand were the black
rocks, eternally wet and smoking with the fog and gale; beyond towered
the icebergs, pale, cold, glittering like spires of silver in the
moonlight; far away, like a vague shadow, a handful of little gray
houses clung like barnacles to the base of a great bare hill whose foot
was in the sea and whose head wavered among the clouds of heaven. Not a
light shone, not a sound or a sign of life came from these little
houses, whose shells close daily at twilight over the life within, weary
with the day's work. Only the dogs were restless--those strange
creatures that shelter in our houses and share our bread, yet live in
another world, a dumb, silent, lonely world shut out from ours by
impassable barriers.

For hours these uncanny dogs had puzzled me, a score of vicious, hungry
brutes that drew the sledges in winter and that picked up a vagabond
living in the idle summer by hunting rabbits and raiding the fishermen's
flakes and pig-pens and by catching flounders in the sea as the tide
ebbed. Venture among them with fear in your heart and they would fly at
your legs and throat like wild beasts; but twirl a big stick jauntily,
or better still go quietly on your way without concern, and they would
skulk aside and watch you hungrily out of the corners of their surly
eyes, whose lids were red and bloodshot as a mastiff's. When the moon
rose I noticed them flitting about like witches on the lonely shore,
miles away from the hamlet; now sitting on their tails in a solemn
circle; now howling all together as if demented, and anon listening
intently in the vast silence, as if they heard or smelled or perhaps
just felt the presence of some unknown thing that was hidden from human
senses. And when I paddled ashore to watch them one ran swiftly past
without heeding me, his nose outstretched, his eyes green as foxfire in
the moonlight, while the others vanishe