Sometimes the whirling snow became so suffocating that the little boy
was compelled to cease his labours on the sheltering wall and crouch
close to it, while Cheenbuk buried his nose and mouth in the white fur
of the bear until the violence of the blasts abated. By keeping the
skin well over the face of the wounded man, he succeeded in guarding him
from them effectually. But his mind misgave him when he tried to look
through the whirling confusion around, and thought of the long tramp
that Anteek would have ere he could commence his return journey with the
sledge.

It turned out, however, that this was one of those short-lived squalls,
not uncommon in the Arctic regions, which burst forthwith unwonted fury,
sweep madly over the plains of the frozen seas, rush up into the valleys
of the land, and then suddenly stop, as though they felt that all this
energy was being spent in vain. In a short time, which however seemed
interminable to the watchers on the hillside, the wind began to abate
and the wild gusts were less frequent. Then it calmed down; finally it
ceased altogether; and the storm-cloud, passing away to the south-east,
left the dark sky studded with the myriad constellations of the starry
host.

Uncovering Gartok's face to see how it fared with him, and hoping that
he slept, Cheenbuk found that he was wide awake, but in a condition that
made him more anxious than ever. He looked up at the face of his
protector with a faint but grateful smile.

"I have always been your enemy," he said, in a low voice, "but you have
been my friend."

"That does not matter now," replied Cheenbuk. "I have never been _your_
enemy. We will be friends from this time on."

Gartok closed his eyes for a few seconds, but did not speak. Then he
looked up again earnestly.

"No," he said, with more of decision in his tone; "we shall neither be
friends nor enemies. I am going to the country where all is dark; from
which no sound has ever come back; where there is nothing."

"Our people do not talk in this way. They think that we shall all meet
again in the spirit-land, to hunt the seal, the walrus, and the bear,"
returned Cheenbuk.

"Our people talk foolishness. They _think_, but they do not _know_,"
rejoined this Hyperborean agnostic, as positively and as ignorantly as
if he had been a scientific Briton.

"How do you know that there is `_nothing_' in the place where you are
going?" asked Cheenbuk, simply.

Gartok was si