uld quiet them they were all on their feet
restlessly sniffing the air. Charley swung the whip, and shouted at them
to lie down, but they were beyond his control, and would not lie down,
but jumped and strained at their traces, giving out short whines and
howls. He struck at Sampson with the butt end of the whip, and Sampson
snapped at him with ugly fangs, and would have sprung upon him had the
dog's trace not held him in leash.

Then the komatik broke loose. Charley threw himself upon it, still
clinging to the whip, as the dogs, at a mad gallop, turned across a neck
of the marsh and toward a low hill that rose at the edge of the barrens
and a quarter of a mile to the westward.

The komatik bounced from side to side with every hummock of ice it
struck, and several times was in imminent danger of overturning.
Charley shouted "Ah! Ah!" at the top of his voice in vain effort to stop
the mad beasts, and then "Ouk! Ouk! Ouk!" and "Rahder! Rahder! Rahder!"
in the hope that they would swing to the right or to the left and return
to the starting point.

But on they went, howling more excitedly and going faster and faster
until, suddenly, at the farther side of the neck of marsh and at the
very edge of the barrens, the komatik struck a rock and with the impact
the bridle, a line of walrus hide which connected the dogs' traces to
the komatik, snapped. The yelping, howling dogs, freed from the komatik,
ran wildly and eagerly on, and soon passed over the lower slopes of the
hill and out of sight.

Charley, dazed at what had happened, watched the dogs disappear. Then,
in sudden realization that they had escaped from him and were gone, he
ran after them calling them excitedly but vainly.

He had not run far when all at once he saw them swing down over the brow
of the hill toward the komatik, and he turned about and ran to the
komatik to intercept them with the whip, which he was still dragging.
The dogs were before him, a snarling, fighting mass. He was sure they
would tear each other to pieces. He was about to lay the whip upon them
when to his amazement he discovered that there were many more than eight
dogs fighting, and that the strangers were even more ferocious creatures
than those of the team, and wore no harness.

He brought down his whip upon the savage mass. Immediately one of the
strange animals turned upon him, showing its gleaming white fangs, and
with short, snapping yelps was about to spring at him, when Sampson,