nd found her waiting for
him and looking just as she did the morning she waved him farewell, as
she stood in the light of the cold winter moon--tall and graceful and
comely, with the tears glistening in her eyes.

The dogs, still in harness, lay down where they stood, and in a little
while the snow, which found lodgment against the komatik, covered men
and dogs alike in one big drift and the weary travellers slept warm
and well regardless of the fact that at any moment the ice might part
and they be swallowed up by the sea.

The storm was one of those sudden outbursts of anger that winter in
his waning power inflicts upon the world in protest against the coming
spring supplanting him, and as a reminder that he still lives and
carries with him his withering rod of chastisement and breath of
destruction. But he was now so old and feeble that in a single night
his strength was spent, and when morning dawned the sun arose with a
new warmth and the wind had ceased to blow.

The men beneath the snow did not move. It was quite useless for them
to get up. There was nothing that they could do, and they might as
well be sleeping as wandering aimlessly about the ice field.

The dogs, however, thought differently. They had not been fed the
previous night, and bright and early they were up, nosing about within
the limited area afforded them by the length of their traces. One of
them began to dig away the snow around the komatik. He paused, held
his nose into the drift a moment and sniffed, then went vigorously to
work again with his paws. Soon he grabbed something in his fangs. The
others joined him, and the snarling and fighting that ensued aroused
Bob and the sleeping Eskimos.

Aluktook was the first to throw off the snow and look out to see what
the trouble was about Then he shouted and jumped to his feet, kicking
the dogs with all his power. Bob and Netseksoak sprang to his aid, but
they were too late.

The dogs had devoured every scrap of food they had, save some tea that
Bob kept in a small bag in which he carried his few articles of
dunnage.

This was a terrible condition of affairs, for though they were
doubtless doomed to drown with the first wind strong enough to shatter
the ice, still the love of living was strong within them, and they
must eat to live.

Separating and going in different directions, the three hunted about
in the vain hope that somewhere on the ice there might be seals that
they could kill, but