Conversation ceased. Daylight came at nine o'clock. At midday the sky
to the south warmed to rose-colour, and marked where the bulge of the
earth intervened between the meridian sun and the northern world. But
the rose-colour swiftly faded. The grey light of day that remained
lasted until three o'clock, when it, too, faded, and the pall of the
Arctic night descended upon the lone and silent land.
As darkness came on, the hunting-cries to right and left and rear drew
closer--so close that more than once they sent surges of fear through the
toiling dogs, throwing them into short-lived panics.
At the conclusion of one such panic, when he and Henry had got the dogs
back in the traces, Bill said:
"I wisht they'd strike game somewheres, an' go away an' leave us alone."
"They do get on the nerves horrible," Henry sympathised.
They spoke no more until camp was made.
Henry was bending over and adding ice to the babbling pot of beans when
he was startled by the sound of a blow, an exclamation from Bill, and a
sharp snarling cry of pain from among the dogs. He straightened up in
time to see a dim form disappearing across the snow into the shelter of
the dark. Then he saw Bill, standing amid the dogs, half triumphant,
half crestfallen, in one hand a stout club, in the other the tail and
part of the body of a sun-cured salmon.
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