Emile announced that supper was ready, and the police watched their new acquaintances devour it with sympathetic understanding, for they had more than once covered long distances on very short rations in the arctic frost. Afterward they lighted their pipes, and Emile, being tactfully encouraged, told them in broken English stories of the barrens. These were so strange and gruesome that it was only because they had learned something of the wilds that Harding and his friends could believe him. Had they been less experienced, they would have denied that flesh and blood could bear the things the half-breed calmly talked about.
While Emile spoke, there broke out behind the camp a sudden radiance which leaped from the horizon far up the sky. It had in it the scintillation of the diamond, for the flickering brilliance changed from pure white light to evanescent blue and rose. Spreading in a vast, irregular arc, it hung like a curtain, wavering to and fro and casting off luminous spears that stabbed the dark. For a time it blazed in transcendental splendor, then faded and receded, dying out with unearthly glimmering far back in the lonely North.
"That's pretty fine," Lane commented mildly.
Blake smiled, but made no answer. He and his comrades were getting drowsy, and although a stinging wind swept the camp and the green wood burned badly, they were filled with a serene content. The keen bodily craving was satisfied; they had eaten and could sleep; and it looked as if their troubles were over. The dogs were obviously fit for travel, for they were still engaged in a vigorous quarrel over some caribou bones; the toil of the journey would be lightened by carrying their loads on the sled; and the party was strong enough to assist any member of it whose strength might give way. There was no reason to apprehend any difficulty in reaching the settlements; and in their relief at the unexpected rescue their thoughts went no farther. After the hunger and the nervous strain they had borne, they were blissfully satisfied with their present ease. There would be time enough to consider the future.
Sergeant Lane got up and shook the snow from his blanket.
"I've seen a better fire, boys, but I've camped with none at all on as cold a night," he said. "So far as I can figure, we have grub enough; but now that there are three more of us we don't want to lose time. You'll be ready to pull out by seven in the morning."
They lay down in the most comfortable places they could find, and slept soundly, although once during the night Harding was awakened by a dog that crept up to him for warmth.
CHAPTER XX
A STARTLING DISCOVERY
It was getting light the next morning when the reinforced party entered a belt of thicker timber where they first clearly realized the fury of the storm. The trees were small and sprang from a frozen muskeg, so that they could not be uprooted, but the gale had snapped the trunks and laid them low in swaths. Even in the spots where some had withstood its force the ground was strewn with split and broken branches, and to lee of them the snow had gathered in billowy drifts. The scene of ruin impressed the men, who were forced to make long rounds in search of a passage for the sled.