The Eskimo is rather superstitious and for a moment Tunkine nearly yielded to the impulse to flee. Perhaps this mountain was bewitched. But before he could flee, a hand was thrust through the snow. In it was a large hunting knife which Tunkine had no difficulty in recognizing.
With a glad cry he fell upon his knees and began digging frantically to free his friend. After a very few minutes' work Eiseeyou staggered to his feet, stiff, pale, and weak. His right arm hung limp by his side, but that would mend in time and he was still the intrepid hunter with many a good fight against the wind and the cold left in him.
Briefly he told the story of his meeting with the White Czar.
The Eskimos decided that they could not take anything but the bear's great white coat with them. So Tunkine at once set to work divesting him of it. Eiseeyou helped what he could with his left hand.
In an incredibly short time, the white robe was stripped from the dead bear and rolled up ready for the march back to the waiting komatiks. Although by this time the arctic night was again upon them, yet they set off to find the camp where Tukshu waited patiently for them.
About midnight the faithful Tukshu was awakened by a great commotion among the dogs and, crawling hastily from the snow igloo, rifle in hand, he found Tunkine and Eiseeyou in the midst of the yelping pack.
Truly it was a happy meeting of these three hardy hunters.
Men who without the civilized ways of thinking and with little religion, undergo cheerfully every week of the year desperate hardships and dangers, all for the love of those in the igloo in Eskimo Town.
The following night at about the same hour that the two hunters returned to camp, the three sleepers were aroused by a strange noise from the dog teams. Most of the arctic noises they knew at once, but this sound puzzled them for a few minutes. The dog teams seemed to have gone loony, for they were howling intermittently, not in the usual hoarse howl of an Eskimo dog, but in a thin unearthly howl which had a strange bloodcurdling sound. They did not all howl at once, but first one would howl and then another.