"He's an ugly looking brute," observed Charley.
"With the dogs about you'll be wantin' to learn to use the whip," suggested Toby. "They fears un worse than a stick. 'Tis fine sport to learn to crack un, and you'll soon learn to do that, whatever."
Toby brought forth the dog whip. It was a cruel looking instrument, with a lash of braided walrus hide, thirty-five feet in length, and a heavy wooden handle about eighteen inches long. Toby was quite expert in its use. He could snap it with a report like a pistol shot, and at twenty-five or thirty feet distance he could, with the tip of the whip, strike a chip that was no bigger than a half dollar. When he had given an exhibition of his skill, he passed the whip to Charley.
"Now you try to snap un," said he.
It was great fun learning to handle the long whip, and though in his first awkward attempts Charley sometimes wound the lash around his own neck, where it left a red, smarting ring, with much practice he learned, in the course of two or three days, to snap it fairly well and without danger to himself.
During the days that followed Toby and Charley used the dogs and sledge, or komatik, as Toby called it, to haul wood that Toby had cut in the near-by forest. During this time Charley was gradually becoming familiar with the dogs, and sometimes Toby would permit him to guide the komatik, though he himself was always present to exact obedience from the team.
The wood hauling was done in the afternoon, while the mornings were devoted to a visit to the rabbit snares and several marten traps, which Toby had set in the woods, and to the two fox traps on the marsh. Five fine martens had been caught, but no fox had been lured into either trap, when Toby suggested one morning, three weeks after the arrival of the dogs, that they drive the team on the coast ice to a point opposite the marsh, and by a short cut through the forest drive out upon the marsh.
"I'm thinkin' if we moves the fox traps from the mesh to the barrens we'd be gettin' a fox there," said he. "'Twould be a long walk out to the barrens to tend un, but if we takes the dogs and komatik we'd have good travelin' for un everywhere exceptin' through the short neck of woods."
"Let's do!" Charley agreed enthusiastically. "It'll be a lot quicker, and it will give us a fine trip with the dogs every day when we go to look at the traps."
And so it was arranged, and so it came to pass that on that very day Charley met with his first adventure with the dogs, and a most unusual one it was, as Toby declared.