What seemed hours followed, and at last he could stand it no longer. He fastened the galley door, took his repeating rifle under his arm, and marched down the hard drifted snow off the Bowhead in the direction of the igloos. As he did so, far off on the ice to the northward two great white bears lifted their noses and sniffed the wind, which blew from the south. On it came a faint odor of fish, always enough to attract any white bear, but this odor was more appetizing than any the two had ever smelled before. The salmon kettle was doing its work. Warily the two great creatures took their way southward over the rough ice.
At the igloos Harry’s call for Joe was answered by the furry Eskimo head of Harluk. He put this carefully out from the tunnel-like entrance and calmly said Joe was no more. He was a good man and a noble friend, but he was no longer even a spirit. The ghost wolves had no doubt eaten him, and thereby he became as nothing. Killed in battle, eaten by real wolves, his spirit would yet remain, but when the ghost wolves of the Nunatak people got a man, he simply vanished. If Harry did not wish to vanish, it would be well for him to come into the igloo.
Harry took Harluk by the shoulders and pulled the rest of him out into the moonlight.
“Look here, Harluk,” he said. “You stop this nonsense, and tell me where Joe is. Is he with you? If not, where did he go? Tell me and tell me quick.”
Like cures like, says the old adage. Harry’s manner was so fierce that he frightened his dusky friend, and for a moment drove some of the superstitious fear out of him. He spoke to the point when he got his breath. Joe, he said, had gone out with Kroo to bait the ghost wolves. In this direction they had gone, over toward the ridge. Kroo had come back, Joe had not. This was long ago.
“Harluk,” said Harry, “you get that repeating rifle that we gave you, load it, and come with me. Tell Kroo to come, too, and bring his gun and Konwa. The others shall stay with the women and children.”
The three came, reluctantly. Harry’s impetuosity carried them along, but some distance behind. Any one of them would have faced danger and probable death without a tremor, but this matter of ghosts was different. They reached the place where Kroo had left Joe, and Kroo pointed out his tracks, indistinct in the moonlight, then farther on they saw where he had gone on. But they saw neither the bundle nor Joe. Unlike his cousin, the Indian of the interior, the Eskimo has no special aptitude in following a blind trail, hence it was Harry who first noted in the snow the indistinct marks of clawed feet. At sight of this the three men of the north collapsed together in a shivering bunch. The ghost wolves had been abroad, their eyes saw the marks of their feet. Joe, brave and able as he was, had been eaten and was now no more, even in spirit. The Nunatak people were no doubt all about them at that moment, and if they got back to the igloos safe, it would be a wonder. They headed tremblingly for home, but Harry stepped resolutely in front of them. The spirit of battle was fully roused in him now, and he had no thought of ghosts. Joe was to be found, rescued if need be, and the Eskimos must be made to help. Force would be of no avail. He must meet superstition with superstition.
“Look here, Harluk,” he said, “do you not know that the white man is a great ankut, a wizard much greater than any? Did we not make the ghost ship real? Can I not make the spirit of a man or a place go into a little box and come out again so that you may see it and hold it in your hand? I tell you, if we do not find Joe and you do not help me, the ghost birds of the white man’s Nunatak shall fly away with you. They shall hang you head down in the smoke-hole of his igloo, and with fire shall torment your bones as long as the ice lasts in the sea. Now will you come with me?”
It was too bad, and Harry knew it, but there did not seem to be any other way. It certainly had a great effect on his superstitious friends. They drew suddenly back from him with an alarm that nearly made him laugh in spite of the fact that he felt the situation to be critical. He held one hand aloft and seemed to listen. “The ghost birds are coming,” he cried; “I hear their wings!”
Konwa’s teeth chattered audibly, Harluk was sullenly silent under this counter pressure of conflicting ghosts, but Kroo, the old head man, drew himself up with a certain dignity. He seemed to conquer his fears, and for the rest of the night he acted the part of a brave man. “There be many wizards abroad to-night,” he said, “and my white brother is perhaps one. Kroo will help his friends in spite of evil spirits.”