Boris, the leader, alone was unsubdued and persistent. Again and again, the brute gathered himself together and charged and leaped, howling with rage. Each time the waiting whip rose up to meet him, and the great brute, twisting his head in midair, sprang short and aside, to circle madly on the ice for another opening.
Soft-voiced methods were of no avail with Boris. He must be made to feel the power of the master, must be conquered at once, or he would be forever treacherous and useless.
Again the dog sprang from his haunches. That time no whip seemed waiting, but rested at the man's side. The huge brute, with a moan of hate, launched himself straight at his adversary's throat. Crouched low, Polaris let him come. Lightning quick, the left hand of the man flashed out and closed on the windpipe of Boris, just below the clashing jaws. Watching sailors on the Minnetonka rubbed their eyes and looked again in wonder.
Polaris stood rigid as a statue in steel. His left arm extended straight in front of him, and in his grasp he held the struggling animal, held him as he had caught him, in midair, a yard above the ice—and Boris was no toy, but would have tipped the scales to the weight of a powerful man. Polaris' cap had fallen to the ice in the struggle. He wore his white bearskin garments. His yellow hair tossed back, he seemed to the watching, wondering men the embodiment of the wild spirit of this wild land, come into his own again.
With a stern eye to the other dogs, he held Boris, as though in a vise, and fear grew in the stout and sullen heart of the brute. To the terror of those steely fingers that clutched his throat was added the terror of the empty air, through which his four feet thrashed madly, and could find no hold or rest. The deadly grip tightened. The dog's struggles grew weaker and weaker. His jaws gaped wide. He gasped and gulped in vain for one breath of air that should give him life and energy and spirit to fight on. His struggles ceased, and he hung limp in the hand of the master.
Gently Polaris set the animal down on the ice, and relaxed the grim hold on his throat. With great gasps Boris took into his lungs once more the life-giving air. The man snaked in the long whiplash. Waiting a few moments until the great dog's senses had fully returned, he took a yard of the thongy tip of the lash and laid it smartly across the flanks of Boris, not cruelly, but with sufficient sting to make the punishment tell. The other dogs trotted uneasily about, sniffing, whining, and eying their fallen leader.
Presently Polaris stood up, turned his back deliberately on Boris and walked a few steps from him, still holding the whip. He called the dog to come to him. The huge animal arose, shook himself, glanced shamefully at his mates, stretched himself, tossed his head with a snort, and followed after the man. Polaris bent down and patted his shaggy head, with a word of encouragement. At his touch, the brute trembled slightly, but the man's voice was reassuring, and the whip hung idle. Boris rubbed his head against the knee of Polaris and whined. He had found his master, and he knew it. Other dogs might, and did, turn on Polaris again, but Boris never.
One by one, the other brutes learned their lesson of obedience, learned that they served a wise and vigilant master, and gave in to the lash and the harness. Soon the man was able to take them far afield, and crossed the floe to the east for a number of long runs.
On the twenty-ninth day from the firing of the first lyddite blasts, the stout Minnetonka shook her sides clear of the drift-ice from the last channel, and shot southward into free water. Picking up the miners and Polaris and his team, Scoland pointed a course some three miles from the eastern shore, and the cruiser tore on under forced draft, so continuously that the canny MacKechnie shook his gray head many a time and oft over the depletion of coal-bunkers.