After getting in touch with Curlie and rejoicing over the knowledge that he was alive and safe, they crept into their sleeping-bags and speedily drifted away to the land of dreams.
Joe was awakened some time later to hear old Major sawing at the chain which bound him to his sled and barking lustily.
Before his eyes were fully open he heard a ripping sound at the flaps of the tent. The next instant two great round balls of fire appeared at the gap made in the tent-wall.
“Jennings! Jennings!” he shouted hoarsely. “A bear! A bear!”
The polar bear, attracted by the sound of his voice, lunged forward, taking half the tent with him.
Joe had scarcely time to creep back into the depths of his sleeping bag when the bear’s foot came down with a thud exactly where his head had been a second before.
* * * * * * * *
What Curlie Carson saw as he plunged toward his reindeer there at the edge of the scrub forest was a spectacle which might well have staggered a person much older than himself.
The forest of scrub spruce was on fire. The fire was traveling toward him, seemed, indeed, to be all but upon him.
There was not a breath of air. The fire traveled by leaping from tree to tree. The very heat of it appeared to seize the dwarf trees and, uprooting them, to hurl them hundreds of feet in air.