She scratched her head, and stared very hard at the fire, as if she found a good deal of difficulty in remembering the facts. And that is not to be wondered at, considering how long ago it was that King Walrus went away from Labrador, and how many queer things had happened since then. Little Flying Plover often wondered at the way his grandmother remembered those very ancient happenings, and yet sometimes forgot little things that he could remember perfectly clearly. Well, she scratched her head, and stared at the fire—and, presently, she remembered.
"When King Walrus heard about the strange thing in front of the two-legged people's hillside," she said, "he floundered to the top of a near-by hummock and looked at it in wonder and with a queer feeling inside him. The queer feeling was fear—and King Walrus had never felt it before. He looked at the leaping flames and wondered if the sky had broken and the red sunset had fallen on the world. He looked at the smoke which poured up in black clouds and white clouds and blue clouds; and he thought that they, too, had fallen from the sky and were now hurrying back to it. And the sparks? Why, the stupid old fellow thought those were stars. His people—the smaller walruses and bears and arctic foxes that had followed him from the ice-fields—told him that the terrible creature was eating a tree just as they would eat a fresh cod-fish. They told him to listen, and they would hear it growling and cracking the dry wood with its red teeth. The old Walrus listened, and sure enough, he heard those terrible sounds. So it was certainly not the sky. 'I hope it will not stay in this country,' he said. 'Where did it come from?'
"A fox said 'One of the man-creatures carried it out to the dead tree from his den. It was very small at first—no bigger than my tongue—and danced on the end of a long stick. But it was frightful to look at, even then.'
"'Why did you not jump upon it, and kill it, when it was so small?' asked old King Walrus. But he did not speak in his usual loud voice.
"'I had not the courage,' said the fox. 'And I saw some animals, who are much larger and stronger than I am, turn around and run away, too,' he added.
"Old blubber-sides could not think of anything just then but the roaring fire in the valley below. Though he had believed, at first, that it was a piece of the red, sunset sky, now that he could hear it growling and biting the wood with its teeth, he felt sure that it was some terrible, new animal that would want to fight him as soon as it had finished eating the tree. But what had it been doing in the den of one of the little, miserable, two-legged men-folk? He lay there on the hummock and stared and stared, expecting, every moment, to see it move toward him.
"Then the fox who had spoken before said, 'The same man who put it in the branches of the tree has another creature of the same kind in his den. I smelt it—and I saw its breath rising through a crack in the rocks.'
"For a moment King Walrus turned his great head from the direction of the blazing tree and looked at the fox. 'Go down and examine it closely, and see if it has any legs,' he said. For a few seconds the fox did not know what to do or say, and felt very foolish. He was afraid of King Walrus—but he was much more afraid of the awful, new thing down in the valley. But his wits soon came back to him. He told the walrus that, of course, he would gladly obey his command; and he immediately started off at a brisk trot toward the burning tree. He kept on in that direction for about a hundred yards, and then, reaching a thicket of alders, he skipped in among the twisted stems, changed his course, and ran for fully a mile in a great half-circle. That brought him out on a hilltop at a safe distance from both the fire and the walrus, and yet in sight of both. Then he sat down comfortably to see what would happen.
"Well, as the wood burned away, and fell to coals and ashes, the great fire in the valley became smaller and smaller. Night grew dark over all the wilderness, save where the sparks broke from the bursting timber and the mouths of several of the men-folk's caves shone red with the little fires within.
"'See, it gets smaller and smaller, every minute,' said King Walrus to his people. It is but a poor creature, after all, and will soon be dead. It is nothing but some foolish little magic of the miserable two-legged people.'