Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1895-10-26
CHAPTER III,


were gulies and ravines, and holes like
gravel pits cut out of ice, Jumps and scatter
ed pieces frozen down to the original floor
OF the noe; blotches of old black ice that had
oeen thrust under the foe in some gale and
heaVed up again; roundish powders of ice.
saW-lRe edges of ice carved by the snow that
Mes before the wind, and sunk pits where
thirty or forty acres lay five or six feet he
low the level Of the rest of the field. From
little distance you might have taken the
Jumps Tor seal or walruS overturned s,eiybs
OF men on hunting expedition or even the
great ten-legged white Spiritbear himsolf
out IN spite of all these fantastic shapes ali
On the very edge of starting into life there
was neither sound nor the least faint echo Of
ts. . And through this silence and
lnrough this waste where the sudden lights
Topped no. ana went out again the sleigh and
ehe TWO mat pulled it crawled like things in
nisntmare-a nightmare of the end of the
world at the end of the world
w men they were tired Kotuko wou,d
make what the hunters call a "half-bouse,,
"a very small snow hut into which thew
t Mouio huddle with the travelling lamp, and
wren they had slept the march began
again-thirty miles day to get ten miles
ncrthWard. The girl was always very
sient' but kotuko muttered to himself and
preke out INTO songs he had learned in the
singing house-summer songs and reindeer
ana salmon songs-all horribly out of place
at tnat season. He would declare that he
heard the tornaq growing to him, and
Would run wildly up hummock tossing
MS arms and speaking to some one in loud,
threatening tones. To tell the truth, Ko.
tuko was very nearly crazy for the time
being; but the girl was sure that he was
being guided by his guardian spirit, and
that everything wotdd come right. She was
not surprised, therefore, when, at the end
OF the fourth parAh. Kotuko, whose eyes
We're burning Hike fire balls in his head,
told her that his tornaq was following
them across the snow in the shape of
tMo-headed dog The girl looked where
kotuko pointe9 ana something seemed to
slip into a ravi4e. It was certainly not hui
man, but everybody knew that the tornait
preferred to appear in the shape of bear
and seal. and such like.
1t might have been the ten-legged white
Spritbear himself, or it might have been
anything, for Kotuko and the girl were SO
starved that their eyes betrayed them.
They had trapped nothing and seen no
trace of game since they had left the viii
lage; their food would not hold out for
another week. and there was gale COM
irg. A polar storm will sometimes blow for
ten days without break, and all that time
1t is certain death to be abroad. kotuko
laid up a snowhouse large enough to take
in the hand sleigh-it is never wise to be
separated from your meat-and while he
was shaping the last irregular BLOCK OF ice
that makes the keystone of the roof he
saw thing looking at him from a little
cliff of Ice half mile away. The air was
haZy, and the thing seemed to be forty feet
long and ten feet high. with twenty feet of
tail and a shape that quivered all along
the outlines. The girl saw it, too. but in
stead of crying aloud with terror. said
quietly: THAT is Quiquern. What comes
after?"
"He will speak to me-" said Kotuko. but
the snow knife trembled in his hand as he
spoke. because, however much man may
believe that he is friend of strange and
ugly spirits, he seldom likes to be taken at
his word. The Quiquern, too, is the phan-