As the ruddy glow of the flames lighted up the rift in Sandy’s rock
castle, the boy looked about him curiously before he began work on his
scant stock of food. The place was about forty feet in length and not
more than five in height, sloping down at each end like the roof in an
old-fashioned farm bedroom.
He noted with some satisfaction that near the entrance there were masses
of dead and dried up bushes, from which he thought he could contrive a
mattress later on. But for the present he devoted himself to his meal.
Luckily, he had brought along a pannikin, and in this, when he had
melted some snow for water, he made tea, without a small package of
which the true adventurer of the northern wilds never travels. The hot
liquid did him almost as much good as the food, and, as Sandy remarked
as he gulped it down, it was “main filling.”
His supper disposed of, Sandy sat for some little time in front of the
fire.
“Heaven be praised, there are no dishes to wash,” he said to himself in
his whimsical way.
The time was a favorable one for thinking, and many thoughts ran through
Sandy’s mind as he sat watching the flames. His chums, what were they
doing? How little they imagined his predicament at that particular
moment. Sandy found himself wondering whether he would ever see them
again. The warmth of the fire circulated pleasantly through his veins. A
delightful glow crept over him.
He was just about dozing off when a noise near the cave mouth startled
him.
He looked up, but could see nothing. He thought, however, that in the
darkness he could detect the sound of a furtive footfall.
It was creeping away as if in fear of him.
Sandy came back into the warmth and fire-glow of the rift and lay down
at full length in front of the blaze. How long he lay there before he
was again disturbed he had no means of knowing.
But suddenly he was attracted to the mouth of the rift once more by a
recurrence of the noise. Once more he hastened to investigate, but with
the same results as before.
He began to grow nervous. Although he could see nothing, he was sure
that he had heard some mysterious sounds out there in the darkness. But
when he got up to look nothing was to be seen. It was very perplexing
and, considering his situation, not a little alarming. Lying down again
by his fire, the boy made a determined effort to compose his nerves. But
try as he would, he found his mind focused upon one subject, and one
only: the wolves.
From time to time the night was tortured by their howls. It was as if
they were trying to show the boy that although he was in hiding they had
not forgotten him; that they would wait until he was forced to come off
the rocks and make a final dash for freedom before they devoured him.
The soft footfalls that he was sure he had heard outside the rift, he
was now almost certain had been made by the wolves. Some of the stronger
of the pack had scrambled up on the rocks and were waiting outside his
place of refuge till a favorable moment presented itself for an attack.
Sandy clutched his rifle nervously. He was determined when the moment
came to sell his life as dearly as possible. How many in number his foes
would be he had no means of telling. But he knew full well that his
cartridges were all too few.
With his weapon gripped ready for instant action, Sandy waited the next
move on the part of his implacable foes. But minute succeeded minute and
the sounds from without the rift were not repeated.
The boy began to think that he might have been mistaken. Perhaps, after
all, it was his excited imagination that had conjured up the sounds.
He rose and looked outside once more. It was a clear, starlit night. The
rocks towered up blackly like some giant’s castle amidst the
bluish-whiteness of surrounding snow wastes. A sensation of terrible
loneliness ran through Sandy as he reflected that he was the only human
being for miles and miles in that immense solitude. Probably the party
in search of the thief were the nearest of his own kind within a great
distance.
It was small wonder that the boy trembled a little as out there under
the stars he revolved the situation. There was no use evading it, if
help did not arrive, or the wolves retreat, he was doomed either to die
by starvation on the rocks, or be rent by the teeth of the pack in the
event of his attempting to escape.
Seasoned men of the northland might well have been dazed by such a
prospect. There did not appear to be one chance in a hundred for the
boy. Sandy looked the question fairly and squarely in the face. It is to
his credit that by a supreme effort of pluck and grit he averted a
second breakdown and retained a grip upon his nerves and courage.
As he stood there, the pack below him rent the air with their wild
hunting cry. The sound chilled him to the marrow, and trembling despite
himself, he crept back into the rift and sought the companionship of the
fire.
About five minutes later there came a sort of scraping noise from the
mouth of the rift. Sandy gazed up, and there, confronting him, with
hungrily gaping jaws, and great, yellow, signal-lamps of eyes that
flashed evilly in the firelight, were three huge wolves—the leaders of
the pack. With a wild cry, Sandy sprang up with his rifle in his hand.
He was ready for the fight.
The wolves dashed forward, and as he aimed and fired——!
The rifle turned into a stick of firewood. The wolves into three black
rocks piled at the mouth of the rift.
Sandy had been dreaming. But it was a dream that might come true, as he
realized with a sensation of helplessness.