Midnight passed, and Aleck, only half awake, was trying to tuck his blankets closer about him without disturbing his bedfellow, when the tent was suddenly struck by some large object, and considerably shaken. Alarmed and puzzled at the same time, Aleck paused to listen an instant before rising, when the shrieks and barking of the sleepers in the boat came to his ears. He sprang out of his blankets only in time to see two shadowy objects rise from the camp, and drift away across the face of the moon, which was just rising.
"Wh-what w-was that?" came from two scared figures sitting bolt-upright in the yawl, their tongues stuttering with terror and cold combined.
"I don't know." Aleck was as bewildered, if not quite as much frightened, as they.
"Humph!" cried Tug's voice, behind; "you're a pretty set to be scared out of your wits and wake everybody up on account of two birds. They're nothing but snow-owls. Go to bed, or we'll all freeze."
"Wh-wh-what are they?" asked Jim, his teeth playing castanets in spite of all his efforts to control them.
"Tell you in the morning," was the reply. "Go to bed. Come in, Cap'n. Owls are nothing. Come to bed."
This seemed good advice, however gruffly given; but you can hardly expect a person to mince his phrases at two o'clock of a winter's morning, on an ice-floe. Aleck was ready to comply, but he was too cold.
"I must get warm first, and so must you, Jim." Katy had wisely disappeared some time before, and said she was pretty comfortable. "Come and run with me till we get our blood stirring."
Neither of the boys had dared undress at all, so it only remained for Jim to creep out from under the canvas, and limp stiffly to his brother's side. Then hand in hand they raced up and down the ice half a dozen times in the pale greenish moonlight. Once or twice they disturbed an owl perched on the ice, or heard wild hooting—a sound so hollow and unearthly that they could not tell whether it came from near by or far off.