It took all the boy’s grit to make him go on. Only the sight of those lowering sides lent him courage. His sole chance for safety might lie hand in hand with this mysterious danger if the beast had elected to live in the small end of the crack. Light was failing again as he moved away from the second hole, and the darkness tortured his trembling nerves. Cautiously the lad stole on. His right hand grasped his knife, his left was ready for action; while he seemed to cling to the slippery path by his toes.
On either hand the sides sloped downward. “If it keeps on like this the crack will end in a cave,” Kak thought, “a cave with a top of soft snow well within my reach.”
Sure enough! He came to another corner, rounded it timidly, and found himself facing the end of the tunnel where the walls ran sharply together, forming a narrow cave. In this cave, filling it completely, stood a full-grown wolf. Its gaunt, gray form was partly shrouded by gray gloom, but the yellow eyes looking out of that triangular face were horribly alive. Kak stopped, choking back fear. He swallowed. His breath caught and came in sobs, turn about. He wanted to fly and was too frightened; so he just stood like a fool, waiting for the famished animal to spring and devour him. The wolf waited also.... Little by little, as nothing happened, the boy regained his common sense. Of course the wolf would be scared, poor thing, cornered that way with no means of escape! He saw it was petrified by fear. It looked thin and hungry and was probably weak. Kak felt very sorry for his fellow prisoner, yet he wanted to put distance between them. One never knows the strength and wickedness of a wild animal at bay.
The two stood regarding each other, neither of them moving. Kak had the advantage—he could retreat. His brain worked madly.
“If I go back to the second hole,” he thought, “and try knocking some more snow down and piling it up against the side of the crevasse, possibly I can climb out there.”
Stealthily he edged away, keeping his eye on the foe till the curve of the wall divided them; then he made tracks as fast as he could over the glare ice.
Standing under the hole broken by the wolf’s fall Kak sent his knife flying up against the roof; it fell back amid a tiny shower of snow. He threw it again; a slightly heavier cloud descended. At each throw a little more seemed to come down. The boy was all eagerness; he tossed and tossed and tossed in a fury of excitement till he saw the precious knife suddenly shoot up against the sky. For one terrifying instant it looked as if it would fall outside on top of the crust. His heart stopped beating. He shut his eyes. Hours seemed to pass before the tinkle of copper on ice broke his tension.
“Bears and foxes! How could I have been so careless hopping about that way and never giving a thought!”
Facing a large, ravenous wolf with a knife in one’s hand, and facing the same beast unarmed are vastly different. This momentary shock made it clear to Kak he was fairly well off, but it jarred his faith in the new scheme. He was afraid now to throw with energy and abandon, and the roof seemed too hardly packed to be broken by half measures. He scraped the loose snow together with his feet, piled it up, patting it hard by hand, stood on it and tried to reach the top. But most of the mound had been lying on the ice floor and was all powdery cold so that it broke under his weight.
“This will take days!” the boy cried in despair. “I’ll be hungry and maybe freeze, or perhaps the others will give me up and go away.”