220

"HE SAW THE GRAY FORMS OF THE PACK" 228

"A SNIPE WHICH FLEW TOO LOW OVER THE DITCH" 238

"MADLY JOYOUS, HE KILLED, AND KILLED, AND KILLED, FOR THE JOY
OF KILLING" 241

"WOULD WHISK SHARPLY INTO THE MOUTH OF THE BLACK TUNNEL" 247

"CONFRONTING THE TWO GREAT CATS WITH UPLIFTED PAW AND MOUTH
WIDE OPEN" 258

"ONCE MORE THE WATCHFUL SENTINEL APPEARED" 260

"THE NOISELESS WINGS WERE NOW JUST BEHIND HIM" 266

"HIS APPREHENSIVE EARS CAUGHT A CURIOUS SOUND" 274

"THE BIG OWL HAD BEEN DISTURBED AT ITS BANQUET" 277

"WHICH SEEMED TO SCRUTINIZE HIM STEADILY" 278

"THOSE SWIFT AND IMPLACABLE LITTLE WHALES WHO FEAR NO LIVING
THING" 296

"FAR OFFSHORE, ONE OF THESE MONSTERS CAME UP AND SPRAWLED UPON
THE SURFACE" 300

"UP DARTED A LIVID TENTACLE, AND FIXED UPON IT" 302

"A SINGULAR FIGURE, DESCENDING SLOWLY THROUGH THE GLIMMERING
GREEN" 304

[Illustration]

The Haunters of the Silences

The Summons of the North

I

In the mystic gloom and the incalculable cold of the long Arctic night,
when Death seemed the only inhabitant of the limitless vasts of ice and
snow, the white bear cub was born. Over the desolate expanses swept the
awful polar wind, now thick with fine, crystalline snow which volleyed
and whirled and bit like points of steel, now glassy clear, so that the
great, unwavering Arctic stars could preside unobscured over its
destructive fury. When the wind was still, not less awful than the wind
had been was the stillness, in which the unspeakable cold wrought
secretly its will upon the abandoned world. Sometimes the implacable
starlight would pale suddenly, and the lovely, sinister, spectral
flames of the aurora, electric blue, and violet, and thin, elusive red,
would go dancing in terrible silence across the arch of sky.

But the white cub--contrary to the custom of her kind his mother had
borne but the one, instead of two--felt nothing of the cold and the
unutterable desola