It began when a woman and her husband waked suddenly, feeling that all was not well. They looked round the igloo, yet could detect nothing amiss. Its other occupants slept soundly. There was the thud and the roar of the wild hurricane without, but all seemed snug within. And yet—what was that? Even as the goodwife watched and waited, there came another of those strange quiverings in the ice, and the cooking pot suspended over the lamp began to swing. The awful thing told its own tale! The ice on which the camp was built was breaking up beneath it, and every soul was faced with imminent and deadly peril. The sea was fathoms deep below; the land a long distance away! Darkness and the savage uproar without made chaos of the arctic night. Then indeed the ice gave way, and in a moment became nothing but a pounding, grinding mass of detatched fragments, on which the wrecked camp tossed. The sealers, roughly awakened, smashed down their doors, or with knife and spear cut a way out of their igloos as best they might, and got clear of them, followed by the women and children. With the strange but unerring instinct of primitive man, they headed, even in that tumult and pitchy darkness, for the unseen land; and then began a perilous race with death and the spirits of the storm. They had to spring from floe to floe, following each other, encouraging and helping the women, finding a way where from moment to moment there might be none, risking everything at every leap. Among those in the crowd was Kownak, a young hunter, and his new made wife. The girl was only then recovering from a recent sickness, and her strength completely failed her. The two started, indeed, on their ghastly journey like the rest; but before half the distance to safety was accomplished the young wife—wet, terrified, and weak—sank down exhausted and beaten on the bitter ice with a cry of despair. Kownak lifted her up and bore her on in his arms. But the rocking of the ice flung them both into the sea time and again, despite his utmost endeavour. Once he managed to grip the edge of the floe, whilst the girl scrambled back on to it again over his shoulders. He stripped off his coat to wrap it round her in the frantic effort to keep her from freezing, and tried again to lift and carry her. But it was an impossible feat on the tossing, glassy ice. She struggled to rise and stagger on, but could endure no more and sank down again, unconscious, to be frozen to death within another minute. Kownak could not tear himself from the body until it had become nothing but an indistinguishable mass, one with the ice. Only then did he remember his own desperate plight, and make a final effort to save himself. After incredible exertions and hairbreadth escapes, at last he reached the shore, black with frostbite, and joined the surviving remnant of the sealing camp. The merest handful of the people had outlived that terrible night. CHAPTER VII WOMANHOOD IN THE ARCTICS.