Then the hunt for the missing man began again. The full moon shone low on the horizon, and the stately hosts of the aurora began to parade the sky with flaunting crimson banners. The two lighted up the white wastes with a radiance that was but little less than daylight, and with their help they followed the claw tracks here and there. It seemed as if many ghost wolves had been out that night, prowling along the hollows between snow ridges. Here and there they found an imprint quite plain, showing the mark of a heavy foot with claws on the front. By and by Harry found a place where four of these converged in a spot, and something like a heavy body had fallen in the snow. Kroo looked at this place intently.
“Bundle here,” he said.
Then the four tracks blurred into one another and went on. Harry had a moment’s mental vision of the indistinct figure that had flitted back and forth in the moonlight, then risen and gone off in a horizontal position, and he guessed very nearly right as to the catastrophe. He found shattered fragments of a chunk of ice on the snow, and on one of these what looked like a spot of blood. A great anger swelled in Harry’s breast at the sight of this, and for a moment he choked for words.
“See,” he said, showing the blood-stained crystal to the Eskimos; “they have hurt him and carried him away. Here are their tracks. It cannot be ghosts. Ghosts do not draw blood. We shall find them and kill them. Kill them, do you hear? whether they are men or beasts.”
Kroo stepped forward and examined the deeper tracks critically. “Nanuk,” he said; “bear; plenty bear.” Konwa, himself a mighty bear hunter, corroborated the testimony.
This put new courage into Harluk and Konwa. Bears they knew and would fight in any number, and for the first time they took an active interest in the proceedings. The trail was broad and easy to follow in the soft snow, and they went on for some distance. Down near the shore, however, they lost it, and did not pick it up again. Then, at Kroo’s suggestion, they spread out far apart and began to zigzag along the snow, each hunting carefully.
But if the light-hearted Eskimos had in a large measure lost their superstitious dread, the discovery of bear tracks had not helped Harry to overcome his. Why should bears attack Joe and carry him off bodily? Why had he not used his rifle before it happened? It was a good deal of a mystery, and he could not help feeling that the whole affair was ghostly and savored of the supernatural. This in no wise affected his courage and eagerness in the hunt.
There certainly were bears about, real bears, for the two that had been attracted by the salmon bait had nearly reached the ship. They slipped along cautiously from hummock to hummock, and were much disturbed by the presence of men ashore. These they winded; but the salmon bait was too much for their hungry stomachs, and they went cautiously toward it. The curiosity of madam bear, or else her hunger, was greater, for she was well in front and stepped forward and breasted the fatal line, while her lord and master stood to one side.
Meanwhile things had been happening rapidly over on shore. Harry, Kroo, and Harluk, armed with rifles, Konwa with his great walrus spear, had spread far apart and were hunting carefully for tracks in the snow, but it was drifted so hard thereabouts that they found none. Harry was nearest ashore of any, and he suddenly felt the snow giving way under his feet. He gave a cry of alarm and went down out of sight, landing full upon something solid, that in the indistinct light of an oil lamp looked and felt like a bear. This creature turned and grappled him, yet there was no clutch of bear’s claws, but rather the arms of a man that had hold of him. The face that was turned toward him was not that of a bear either, but seemed to be the evil face of a man.
“Kroo! Harluk! Help!” shouted Harry, and wrestled desperately with his opponent.