Again he started forward, trying to make light of the cry; but in his heart he knew it well.
A thousand years before, far in the wilds near Ungava Bay, in Labrador, he had heard the same plaintive, starving call--and he remembered still the deadly peril, the long fight, the horror that had followed.
He knew the cry; and his soul quivered with the fear of it; fear not for himself, but for the life of this girl whose keeping lay within the hollow of his hand.
For the long wail that had trembled across the vague spaces of the forest, affronting the majesty and dignity of night and the coming stars with its blood-lusting plaint of famine, had been none other than the summons to the hunt, the news of quarry, the signal of a gathering wolf-pack on their trail.
CHAPTER VI
TRAPPED!
“That's not the truth you're telling me, Allan,” said Beatrice very gravely. “And if we don't tell each other the whole truth always, how can we love each other perfectly and do the work we have to do? I don't want you to spare me anything, even the most terrible things. That's not the cry of a bird--it's wolves!”
“Yes, that's what it is,” the man admitted. “I was in the wrong. But, you see--it startled me at first. Don't be alarmed, little girl! We're well armed you see, and--”
“Are we going to stay here in the tower if they attack?”
“No. They might hold us prisoners for a week. There's no telling how many there may be. Hundreds, perhaps thousands. Once they get the scent of game, they'll gather for miles and miles around; from all over the island. So you see--”
“Our best plan, then, will be to make for the banca?”