ot, and the passageway, gorged with surging, helpless men,
became a shambles. The rifles, pumped without aim into the mass,
withered it away like a machine gun, and against that steady stream of
death no man could advance.

"Never was there the like!" panted one of the Hungry Folk. "I did
but look in, and the dead were piled like seals on the ice after a
killing!"

"Did I not say, mayhap, they were fighters?" cackled the weazened old
hunter.

"It was to be expected," Aab-Waak answered stoutly. "We fought in a
trap of our making."

"O ye fools!" Tyee chided. "Ye sons of fools! It was not planned, this
thing ye have done. To Neegah and the six young men only was it given
to go inside. My cunning is superior to the cunning of the Sunlanders,
but ye take away its edge, and rob me of its strength, and make it
worse than no cunning at all!"

No one made reply, and all eyes centred on the igloo, which loomed
vague and monstrous against the clear northeast sky. Through a hole
in the roof the smoke from the rifles curled slowly upward in the
pulseless air, and now and again a wounded man crawled painfully
through the gray.

"Let each ask of his neighbor for Neegah and the six young men," Tyee
commanded.

And after a time the answer came back, "Neegah and the six young men
are not."

"And many more are not!" wailed a woman to the rear.

"The more wealth for those who are left," Tyee grimly consoled. Then,
turning to Aab-Waak, he said: "Go thou, and gather together many
sealskins filled with oil. Let the hunters empty them on the outside
wood of the igloo and of the passage. And let them put fire to it ere
the Sunlanders make holes in the igloo for their guns."

Even as he spoke a hole appeared in the dirt plastered between the
logs, a rifle muzzle protruded, and one of the Hungry Folk clapped
hand to his side and leaped in the air. A second shot, through the
lungs, brought him to the ground. Tyee and the rest scattered to
either side, out of direct range, and Aab-Waak hastened the men
forward with the skins of oil. Avoiding the loopholes, which were
making on every side of the igloo, they emptied the skins on the dry
drift-logs brought down by the Mandell River from the tree-lands to
the south. Ounenk ran forward with a blazing brand, and the flames
leaped upward. Many minutes passed, without sign, and they held their
weapons ready as the fire gained headway.

Tyee rubbed his hands gleefully as the dry structure b