“I will do it,” the boy answered boldly. “Who dares to say I cannot bring four loads? Hi there, Sapsuk! Hok, hok, Pikalu!”
He swung his team around in a wide circle and dashed away without waiting for comment from the astonished girls.
“Kak!” cried his mother from the tunnel entrance. “Kak! It is too late!”
But a breeze had sprung up blowing out of the west and whisked her voice in the opposite direction. Anxiously she watched boy, dogs, and sled dwindle to a small, black speck.
“You will come inside now, child,” Guninana commanded, ill pleased; and Noashak, humbled by her brother’s rash magnificence, and fearful of her own part in it, obeyed. The neighbor girls ran home quickly. All at once the flat snow landscape around the two snow houses lay empty and deserted.
By the time Kak reached the whale a rack of clouds had blown up hastening the night. The earth and sky turned all one dark, cold gray. Those other Eskimos, whom he had found cutting flesh earlier, were gone; and wolves howled distantly gathering for a feed. At their dismal cries Kak suddenly felt afraid. His hands shook so that he could hardly lift the meat. He stopped and peered over his shoulder, trying to see with his bright eyes through the thickening night. He did not care a jot for wolves, they are cowards and will fly from a shout; but Noashak’s last mean taunt burned in his mind. If a great white bear were to prowl out of the gloom he knew it would go hard with him and the dogs. His hands stiffened from fright and his skin grew clammy. Another long, lone howl arose inland; it seemed to run right up his spine. Kak fancied he saw a huge yellow blur moving beyond the carcass and at that his hair felt as if it were rising under his fur hood. The night turned blacker, the wind sighed icily, and fear overflowed him like water. He dropped a ten-pound chunk of meat from his petrified fingers and sprang for the sleigh calling his dogs:
“Hok! Hok!”
They were wild to be off home. At a single bound the team broke and ran, with Kak racing after them, yelling at the top of his voice to keep his courage up: “Yip—yip—yi!”—and mumbling charms his mother had taught him to scare off evil.
The dogs raced faster and faster; the howling of the wolves excited them; the nearly empty sleigh flashed over the hard snow; and a freshening wind behind drove the whole party on. Kak, thrilled by this rush of freedom, soon forgot all his fears. He urged the team with whistle and shout, yipping and yiing like a maniac or a real boy, till suddenly the sled gave a lurch, turned upside down, and sent him flying heels over head across its runners. The dogs, jerked back on their traces, stopped abruptly, and Kak, who was buried neck and arms in a drift before you could say Jack Robinson, picked himself up, dug the snow out of his eyes and mouth, and dusted off his furry clothes.
“Ouch! Bhoo! I say, old Sapsuk, where are we?”