“It's the wind,” said Philip. “It has troubled me many times out on the snow plains. I've heard it wail like children crying among the dunes, and again like women screaming, and men shouting. You'd better go to bed.”
“Listen!” The doctor stiffened, his white face turned to the door.
“Good Heavens, was that the wind?” he asked after a moment.
Philip had rolled from his bunk and was pulling on his clothes.
“Dress and we'll find out,” he advised.
Together they went to the door, opened it, and stepped outside. The sky was thick and heavy, with only a white blur where the moon was smothered. Fifty yards away the gray gloom became opaque. Over the thousand miles of drift to the north there came a faint whistling wind, rising at times in fitful sweeps of flinty snow, and at intervals dying away until it became only a lulling sound. In one of these intervals both men held their breath.
From somewhere out of the night, and yet from nowhere that they could point, there came a human voice.
“Pier-r-r-r-e Thoreau—Pier-r-r-r-e Thoreau—Ho, Pierre Thoreau-u-u-u!”
“Off there!” shivered the doctor.
“No—out there!” said Philip.