“I don’t know,” replied Joe; “but whatever it is, ghost wolves or real ones, or just superstition, we must stop it. We can’t lose our friends this way, and they must not lose their little stock of food and furs. Will you guard the ship to-night and let me sit up with the Eskimos? Ghosts must be pretty hard to hit, but we’ll see what a 45-70 will do for them.”
There was a grim set to Joe’s square jaw, and Harry felt the spirit of battle rise within him as he saw it.
“You go ahead,” he said; “and if the ghost wolves come to the ship, I’ll deal with them.”
That night Joe sat in the snow igloo with Harluk, Atchoo his wife, and the two Eskimo babies, one a child of a year or so, the other four or five, both fat and roly-poly youngsters with beady black eyes that looked in wonder at the white man. A blubber lamp burned brightly in the centre of this igloo, while over it hung a kettle of melted snow-water. Round the wall was a seat of hardened snow covered with a few sealskins. In the corner was a bundle. Joe examined this bundle. It contained a small stock of food, all there was in the igloo, and some furs. Harluk was prepared to propitiate the evil spirits, should they again send their representatives. Later in the evening more of the Eskimos came in, until all the members of the village were concentrated in this igloo and that of Kroo, the head man, near by. Fear of their ghostly oppressors was strong upon the village, which, but for Joe’s offered protection, would have been already far on the road south toward Point Hope.
About midnight Atchoo shuddered and drew her children to her. The other Eskimos looked at Joe with their brown faces whitening with fear, for right down the smoke-hole came that weird, wailing howl. Joe snatched the rifle and scrambled out through the low passage. The moon shone brightly on the still whiteness of the Arctic midnight, but there was no sign of living creature in sight. Only over the ridge, some distance away, came the howl again, this time with mocking intonation, as if the messengers of the Nunatak people laughed at his futile efforts. Again it seemed to come right from the ship, and Joe, baffled and angry, yet felt a chill of fear thrill through him. He jumped as a figure appeared almost at his feet, but it was only Kroo with a bundle of provisions and furs in his hand, scrambling from the low passage of his igloo.
“The ghost wolves must be fed,” said Kroo resignedly. “My white brother is brave, but he cannot shoot spirits even if he could find them. I will go.”
Quaking with fear, but doggedly, the old man plodded through the snow toward the ridge. He had gone but a step or two when Joe was close behind him, walking as he walked, so close that from a little distance the two would look like one man in the uncertain light. When they reached a furrow between two drifts Joe dropped into this, out of sight. Kroo went on a few rods farther, placed his offering on the snow, and turned back. He would have paused by Joe, but the latter firmly motioned him on, and a few moments later he entered the igloo.
There was silence for a long time, while Joe watched the bundle narrowly where it showed dark against the white surface, holding his rifle ready for instant use. The minutes seemed to stretch into hours. He felt a chill that was not altogether cold, and his hand shook with a nervous tremor that was very close to fear. Real wolves he did not care for, yet with all his sturdy Anglo-Saxon sense, something of the superstition of the Eskimos seemed to touch him. Civilization slips easily from us when face to face with night, the wilderness, and the unknown. He had a haunting feeling that something was near him, yet peer as he would he could see nothing but the whiteness of the moonlit expanse of snow and the black bundle, untouched, where Kroo had dropped it.
Suddenly he sprang to his feet with a gasp of alarm and surprise, for, seemingly right behind him, sounded a snarling howl. He turned and looked eagerly, and ran in that direction for a few steps, breathless, yet there was no sign of man or beast. He listened intently. No sound for a moment, then right behind his back the howl sounded again, this time with a chuckle like laughter in it, and he gave an exclamation of disgust, for the bundle no longer lay dark upon the snow. The ghost wolves had found their offering and made off with it. It seemed to Joe, as he looked about, as if he could see a blur of a white figure moving along against a white snow ridge, and he brought his rifle to his shoulder to shoot, then hesitated, thinking he must have imagined it, so indistinct was the impression. As he hesitated, he saw another blur of white over a near-by ridge, almost within arm’s reach, with what looked like an evil face in it, and before he could turn, a heavy mass of frozen snow struck him in the head and stretched him senseless. The figure of a white bear with the face of a man leaned over him, then lifted its head and gave forth the wolf howl, a different cry from the others heard that night. There was no chuckle in this howl. It was rather a cry of rage which carried in itself a command, and it had scarcely ceased before three other bear-like figures hurried up. These, too, had the faces of men and they walked erect, yet they left behind tracks of claws. Hurried low words were spoken in Eskimo, and the four took up the motionless figure and carried it away from the igloos, yet a little toward the ship, down a long furrow behind a drift, to a place on the shore where the ice crushing in during the early fall had left a sheltering ridge. Here they vanished with their burden as if they had been dissipated into air.
Harry’s watch was long that night on the deck of the Bowhead. He felt appallingly lonely long before midnight, and it was all he could do to keep from setting out for the shore to see what was happening at the igloos. The ghost wolves seemed less a matter of superstition now that Joe’s sturdy presence was lacking, and he waited with apprehension for their howling, and shivered with nervous dread when it began. He watched narrowly, and saw what he thought was one figure go out from the igloo and return in the uncertain light. Again he heard the howling, now far, now seemingly near, and watching, with his rifle under his arm, he was surprised to see a figure appear dimly in the snow far over on the ridge. He saw this figure move back and forth. Then, to his astonishment, it seemed to rise up from the ground in a horizontal position and move off, disappearing again. All this was strange and disquieting, and for a long time there was silence.