He tried to hide his jubilation as he talked of more cartridges. He
forgot Bram, and the Eskimos waiting outside the corral, and the
apparent hopelessness of their situation. HER FATHER! He wanted to
shout, or dance around the cabin with Celie in his arms. But the change
that he had seen come over her made him understand that he must keep
hold of himself. He dreaded to see another light come into those
glorious blue eyes that had looked at him with such a strange and
questioning earnestness a few moments before--the fire of suspicion,
perhaps even of fear if he went too far. He realized that he had
betrayed his joy when she had said that the man in the picture was her
father. She could not have missed that. And he was not sorry. For him.
there was an unspeakable thrill in the thought that to a woman, no
matter under what sun she is born, there is at least one emotion whose
understanding needs no words of speech. And as he had talked to her,
sublimely confident that she could not understand him, she had read the
betrayal in his face. He was sure of it. And so he talked about
cartridges. He talked, he told himself afterwards, like an excited
imbecile.
There were no more cartridges. Celie made him understand that. All they
possessed were the four that remained in the revolver. As a matter of
fact this discovery did not disturb him greatly. At close quarters he
would prefer a good club to the pop-gun. Such a club, in the event of a
rush attack by the Eskimos, was an important necessity, and he began
looking about the cabin to see what he could lay his hands on. He
thought of the sapling cross-pieces in Bram's bunk against the wall and
tore one out. It was four feet in length and as big around as his fist
at one end while at the other it tapered down so that he could grip it
easily with his hands.
"Now we're ready for them," he said, testing the poise and swing of the
club as he stood in the center of the room. "Unless they burn us out
they'll never get through that door. I'm promising you that--s'elp me
God I am, Celie!"
As she looked at him a flush burned in her cheeks. He was eager to
fight--it seemed to her that he was almost hoping for the attack at the
door. It made her splendidly unafraid, and suddenly she laughed
softly--a nervous, unexpected little laugh which she could not hold
back, and he turned quickly to catch the warm glow in her eyes.
Something went up into his throat as she stood there looking at him
like that. He had never seen any one quite so beautiful. He dropped his
club, and held out his hand.
"Let's shake, Celie," he said. "I'm mighty glad you understand--we're
pals."
Unhesitatingly she gave him her hand, and in spite of the fact that
death lurked outside they smiled into each other's eyes. After that she
went into her room. For half an hour Philip did not see her again.
During that half hour he measured up the situation more calmly. He
realized that the exigency was tremendously serious, and that until now
he had not viewed it with the dispassionate coolness that characterized
the service of the uniform he wore. Celie was accountable for that. He
confessed the fact to himself, not without a certain pleasurable
satisfaction. He had allowed her presence, and his thoughts of her, to
fill the adventure completely for him, and as a result they were now
facing an appalling danger. If he had followed his own judgment, and
had made Bram Johnson a prisoner, as he should have done in his line of
duty, matters would have stood differently.
For several minutes after Celie had disappeared into her room he
studied the actions of the wolves in the corral. A short time before he
had considered a method of ridding himself of Bram's watchful beasts.
Now he regarded them as the one greatest protection they possessed.
There were seven left. He was confident they would give warning the
moment the Eskimos approached the stockade again. But would their
enemies return? The fact that only one man had attacked the wolves at a
time was almost convincing evidence that they were very few in
number--perhaps only a scouting party of three or four. Otherwise, if
they had come in force, they would have made short work of the pack.
The thought became a positive conviction as he looked through the
window. Bram had fallen a victim to a single javelin, and the scouting
party of Kogmollocks had attempted to complete their triumph by
carrying Celie back with them to the main body. Foiled in this attempt,
and with the knowledge that a new and armed enemy opposed them, they
were possibly already on their way for re-enforcements.
If this were so there could be but one hope--and that was an immediate
escape from the cabin. And between the cabin door and the freedom of
the forest were Bram's seven wolves!
A feeling of disgust, almost of anger, swept over him as he drew
Celie's little revolver from his pocket and held it in the palm of his
hand. There were four cartridges left. But what would they avail
against that horde of beasts! They would stop them no more than so many
pin-pricks. And what even would the club avail? Against two or three he
might put up a fight. But against seven--
He cursed Bram under his breath. It was curious that in that same
instant the thought flashed upon him that the wolf-man might not have
fallen a victim to the Eskimos. Was it not possible that the spying
Kogmollocks had seen him go away on the hunt, and had taken advantage
of the opportunity to attack the cabin? They had evidently thought
their task would be an easy one. What Philip saw through the window set
his pulse beating quickly with the belief that this last conjecture was
the true one. The world outside was turning dark. The sky was growing
thick and low. In half an hour a storm would break. The Eskimos had
foreseen that storm. They knew that the trail taken in their flight,
after they had possessed themselves of the girl, would very soon be
hidden from the eyes of Bram and the keen scent of his wolves. So they
had taken the chance--the chance to make Celie their prisoner before
Bram returned.
And why, Philip asked himself, did these savage little barbarians of
the north want HER? The fighting she had pictured for him had not
startled him. For a long time the Kogmollocks had been making trouble.
In the last year they had killed a dozen white men along the upper
coast, including two American explorers and a missionary. Three patrols
had been sent to Coronation Gulf and Bathurst Inlet since August. With
the first of those patrols, headed by Olaf Anderson, the Swede, he had
come within an ace of going himself. A rumor had come down to Churchill
just before he left for the Barrens that Olaf's party of five men had
been wiped out. It was not difficult to understand why the Eskimos had
attacked Celie Armin's father and those who had come ashore with him
from the ship. It was merely a question of lust for white men's blood
and white men's plunder, and strangers in their country would naturally
be regarded as easy victims. The mysterious and inexplicable part of
the affair was their pursuit of the girl. In this pursuit the
Kogmollocks had come far beyond the southernmost boundary of their
hunting grounds. Philip was sufficiently acquainted with the Eskimos to
know that in their veins ran very little of the red-blooded passion of
the white man. Matehood was more of a necessity imposed by nature than
a joy in their existence, and it was impossible for him to believe that
even Celie Armin's beauty had roused the desire for possession among
them.
His attention turned to the gathering of the storm. The amazing
swiftness with which the gray day was turning into the dark gloom of
night fascinated him and he almost called to Celie that she might look
upon the phenomenon with him. It was piling in from the vast Barrens to
the north and east and for a time it was accompanied by a stillness
that was oppressive. He could no longer distinguish a movement in the
tops of the cedars and banskian pine beyond the corral. In the corral
itself he caught now and then the shadowy, flitting movement of the
wolves. He did not hear Celie when she came out of her room. So
intently was he straining his eyes to penetrate the thickening pall of
gloom that he was unconscious of her presence until she stood close at
his side. There was something in the awesome darkening of the world
that brought them closer in that moment, and without speaking Philip
found her hand and held it in his own. They heard then a low whispering
sound--a sound that came creeping up out of the end of the world like a
living thing; a whisper so vast that, after a little, it seemed to fill
the universe, growing louder and louder until it was no longer a
whisper but a moaning, shrieking wail. It was appalling as the first
blast of it swept over the cabin. No other place in the world is there
storm like the storm that sweeps over the Great Barren; no other place
in the world where storm is filled with such a moaning, shrieking
tumult of VOICE. It was not new to Philip. He had heard it when it
seemed to him that ten thousand little children were crying under the
rolling and twisting onrush of the clouds; he had heard it when it
seemed to him the darkness was filled with an army of laughing,
shrieking madmen--storm out of which rose piercing human shrieks and
the sobbing grief of women's voices. It had driven people mad. Through
the long dark night of winter, when for five months they caught no
glimpse of the sun, even the little brown Eskimos went keskwao and
destroyed themselves because of the madness that was in that storm.
And now it swept over the cabin, and in Celie's throat there rose a
little sob. So swiftly had darkness gathered that Philip could no
longer see her, except where her face made a pale shadow in the gloom,
but he could feel the tremble of her body against him. Was it only this
morning that he had first seen her, he asked himself? Was it not a
long, long time ago, and had she not in that time become, flesh and
soul, a part of him? He put out his arms. Warm and trembling and
unresisting in that thick gloom she lay within them. His soul rose in a
wild ecstasy and rode on the wings of the storm. Closer he held her
against his breast, and he said:
"Nothing can hurt you, dear. Nothing--nothing--"
It was a simple and meaningless thing to say--that, and only that. And
yet he repeated it over and over again, holding her closer and closer
until her heart was throbbing against his own. "Nothing can hurt you.
Nothing--nothing--"
He bent his head. Her face was turned up to him, and suddenly he was
thrilled by the warm sweet touch of her lips. He kissed her. She did
not strain away from him. He felt--in that darkness--the wild fire in
her face.
"Nothing can hurt you, nothing--nothing--" he cried almost sobbingly in
his happiness.
Suddenly there came a blast of the storm that rocked the cabin like the
butt of a battering-ram, and in that same moment there came from just
outside the window a shrieking cry such as Philip had never heard in
all his life before. And following the cry there rose above the tumult
of the storm the howling of Bram Johnson's wolves.