They trudged slowly on again until they thought they must be close to the farther end of the island, when they found progress interrupted by a low headland of rocks partly covered by the brush of a fallen tree-top. In trying to get past it they became entangled in the branches, and Tug said he "'lowed they'd have to light the lantern."
With great care, therefore—for matches were precious—this was done, and its rays at once showed them that they were not the first persons who had been there that night. Branches were freshly broken, and the snow was trampled. They set up a combined shout (and bark) as soon as this was perceived, but nothing came back except the dull echo of their voices and the rustle of the sleet and snow among the leafless and dripping branches.
"Well," said Tug, when he realized this, "our cue is to follow the tracks anyhow."
Crushing through the branches, they saw that the tracks, which had approached from the other side of the rocks and brush, led them to the trunk of the tree, and that then Aleck (if, indeed, it were he who had made them) had walked along the trunk towards its roots. Of course they followed, Tug going ahead with the lantern; but when they arrived at the great base of upturned roots they could not see where Aleck had leaped off, or that he had leaped off at all. On one side the snow lay smooth and untouched; on the other, close under and around the mass of dead roots, was a little thicket of low bushes and a shoulder of black rock. Beyond these the snow had not been disturbed.
This was very mysterious, and chilled their hearts with a nameless fear. They came close together on the high log, and talked almost in whispers. Jim held Tug's arm with both hands, and trembled so that his teeth chattered, and the tears rolled down his cheeks; while Tug himself, old and brave and strong as he was, was so scared (as he often said afterwards) that every creak and moan of the laboring, ice-coated trees seemed a frightful voice, and all the flitting lights and shadows cast by their lantern among the dark trunks and swaying hemlock branches took on shapes that it chilled his blood to look at. Even Rex seemed to catch the panic, and cowered at their feet with bristling hair.
There had been only a moment of this helpless, causeless terror—and no doubt they would quickly have thrown it off—when they were roused by a real danger, which they knew in an instant. All ghosts and goblins, forms and voices, vanished at once, for they heard the wolfish howl of the dreaded dogs.
"Only mastiffs or hounds," you may exclaim, "such as we pass on the street every day, and babies play with, rolling over and on them unharmed!"
Very true; but these dogs had become savage again by their wild life; and no traveller in his sledge on the steppes of Siberia, or postman belated in the Black Forest at New Year, was ever in more danger from wolves than were these two lads from the dogs, if the animals chose to attack them. Perhaps they had not yet been quite long enough in the wilderness to have overcome their once well-learned fear of men, and so would hesitate to attack, in open fight, the beings that heretofore had been their masters; but this was all the hope the boys could have.
"The dogs!" cried Jim, in a hoarse whisper.
"Yes," said Tug, through his teeth. "Here! give me the lantern, quick: we must have a fire."