There was no need of this admonition. Harluk and Harry pried and tugged desperately at the stones. They came slowly, but surely. The pack were bounding over one another now on the far side of the igloo, lashing themselves into a fury of onslaught.
“Quick, my brothers!” cried Harluk. “It is big enough.”
Harry looked at Joe. Moments were precious, yet still the pack hesitated, awed partly by the flash of the big knife, partly by his cool and constant gaze. “Go!” cried Joe. “I’ll follow you.”
Harry plunged through the narrow opening with a great thrill of delight as he felt himself in the outer air. As he disappeared from the igloo, the pack surged forward, but Joe had been waiting for this. He met the foremost with a reach of the long knife full in the breast. With a howl of pain that was his death cry, the brute turned, biting the animal next to him in his agony, and starting a fight among themselves, which took their attention from Joe for a moment. Deftly and quickly he backed through the opening, keeping his eye upon the whirling pack, and holding the bloody knife still in readiness for instant use. A moment and he was safe outside, where he found Harluk and Harry, each with a rifle cocked and ready in his defense.
Without a word Harluk passed his rifle to Joe and hurriedly thrust the stones back into the wall of the igloo, shutting in the struggling and bloody pack. They were safe from this danger, but outside a new one menaced them. The hilarity among the dozen well-armed Ankuts was rapidly approaching a state of frenzy. A chief item of their feast was a peculiar liquor made by steeping toadstools in water, which produces what is known to the whalers as a “toadstool drunk.” This potion first induces an ordinary sort of intoxication, but this soon passes into a sort of fury, in which its victims seem possessed with a demoniacal strength and ferocity. Under its influence the Ankuts were far more to be feared than before. Hiding behind the igloo, the three watched them carefully. As yet they had no suspicion that their prisoners were escaping, and after a little Harluk touched each of his friends. “Come,” he said quietly, and they followed where he led.
To make the situation clear, we must go back to Harluk’s previous movements. He had followed the band of Ankuts warily on their way to the stronghold with their prisoners. Not once had he lost sight of them, not once had they suspected that he followed. He had not been sure, however, in which igloo the boys were confined until he had seen them taken out for the trial and then escorted again to the prison. He had seen the wolf dogs shut in with them, and knew that he must act at once if he would rescue them. The beginning of the Ankut feast had favored this, as well as the lay of the land. From the low bluffs a narrow ridge ran down nearly to the igloo. This gave him shelter in his approach, and it was behind this that he led the boys away from the igloo, but only for a little way. Then, still sheltered by the intervening rise of ground, he turned and led them down to the bank of the stream of warm water, just where it emptied into the larger river. Here was an umiak, turned bottom side up on the bank, with a couple of paddles beside it. As they stooped to lift this umiak into the water, there was a wild howl from the direction of the village.
“Hurry, my brothers!” cried Harluk; “they are coming.”
There was now a tremendous uproar, and the Ankuts were seen tearing down the slope toward them at full speed. They hurriedly pushed off, and Joe and Harluk seized paddles and sent the light boat spinning out into the stream. There was the sound of shots and the spattering of bullets around them as they did so. The Ankuts had opened fire. Harry reached for a rifle and Joe nodded to him.
“See if you can’t stop some of that,” he said. “Plug that white-faced one, if you can.”
Harry hesitated a second. He had never before attempted the life of a fellow creature. Then something stung his left arm. One of the Eskimo shots had grazed him. His hesitation vanished in a second, and he fired coolly at the foremost Ankut. The man stumbled and fell headlong.