A further diversion was created by several women crawling in, bringing food for the men-folk, in old lard-cans or native wooden kantaks. These vessels they deposited by the fire, and with an exchange of grunts went out as they had come.
Nicholas wouldn't let the Boy undo his pack.
"No, we come back," he said, adding something in his own tongue to the company, and then crawled out, followed by the Boy. Their progress was slow, for the Boy's "Canadian webfeet" had been left in the Kachime, and he sank in the snow at every step. Twice in the dusk he stumbled over an ighloo, or a sled, or some sign of humanity, and asked of the now silent, preoccupied Nicholas, "Who lives here?" The answer had been, "Nobody; all dead."
The Boy was glad to see approaching, at last, a human figure. It came shambling through the snow, with bent head and swaying, jerking gait, looked up suddenly and sheered off, flitting uncertainly onward, in the dim light, like a frightened ghost.
"Who is that?"
"Shamán. Him see in dark all same owl. Him know you white man."
The Boy stared after him. The bent figure of the Shamán looked like a huge bat flying low, hovering, disappearing into the night.
"Those your dogs howling?" the visitor asked, thinking that for sheer dismalness Pymeut would be hard to beat.
Nicholas stopped suddenly and dropped down; the ground seemed to open and swallow him. The Boy stooped and saw his friend's feet disappearing in a hole. He seized one of them. "Hold on; wait for me!"
Nicholas kicked, but to no purpose; he could make only such progress as his guest permitted.