d like shadows among the black
rocks, each intent on his unknown quest.

That is why I had come up from my warm bunk at midnight to sit alone on
the taffrail, listening in the keen air to the howling that made me
shiver, spite of myself, and watching in the vague moonlight to
understand if possible what the brutes felt amid the primal silence and
desolation.

A long interval of profound stillness had passed, and I could just make
out the circle of dogs sitting on their tails on the open shore, when
suddenly, faint and far away, an unearthly howl came rolling down the
mountains, _ooooooo-ow-wow-wow!_ a long wailing crescendo beginning
softly, like a sound in a dream, and swelling into a roar that waked the
sleeping echoes and set them jumping like startled goats from crag to
crag. Instantly the huskies answered, every clog breaking out into
indescribable frenzied wailings, as a collie responds in agony to
certain chords of music that stir all the old wolf nature sleeping
within him. For five minutes the uproar was appalling; then it ceased
abruptly and the huskies ran wildly here and there among the rocks. From
far away an answer, an echo perhaps of their wailing, or, it may be, the
cry of the dogs of St. Margaret's, came ululating over the deep. Then
silence again, vast and unnatural, settling over the gloomy land like a
winding-sheet.

As the unknown howl trembled faintly in the air Noel, who had slept
undisturbed through all the clamor of the dogs, stirred uneasily by the
foremast. As it deepened and swelled into a roar that filled all the
night he threw off the caribou skin and came aft to where I was watching
alone. "Das Wayeeses. I know dat hwulf; he follow me one time, oh, long,
long while ago," he whispered. And taking my marine glasses he stood
beside me watching intently.

[Illustration: "The terrible howl of the great white wolf"]

There was another long period of waiting; our eyes grew weary, filled as
they were with shadows and uncertainties in the moonlight, and we turned
our ears to the hills, waiting with strained, silent expectancy for the
challenge. Suddenly Noel pointed upward and my eye caught something
moving swiftly on the crest of the mountain. A shadow with the slinking
trot of a wolf glided along the ridge between us and the moon. Just in
front of us it stopped, leaped upon a big rock, turned a pointed nose up
to the sky, sharp and clear as a fir top in the moonlight,
and--_ooooooo-ow-wow-w