“Leaving the hunters to look after their teams, I returned to the hut. The blinding snow, which battered my face, made me insensible to everything except the idea of getting out of it; and, thinking of no danger, I was in the act of stooping to enter the doorway, when a sudden noise behind me caused me to look around, and there, close at my heels, was the whole pack of thirteen hungry Dogs, snarling, snapping, and showing their sharp teeth like a drove of ravenous Wolves. It was fortunate that I had not got down upon my knees, or they would have been upon my back. In fact, so impetuous was their attack, that one of them had already sprung when I faced round. I caught him on my arm, and kicked him down the hill. The others were for the moment intimidated by the suddenness of my movement, and at seeing the summary manner in which their leader had been dealt with; and they were in the act of sneaking away, when they perceived I was powerless to do them any harm, having nothing in my hand. Again they assumed the offensive; they were all around me; an instant more and I should be torn to pieces. I had faced death in several shapes before, but never had I felt as then; my blood fairly curdled in my veins. Death down the red throats of a pack of wolfish Dogs had something about it peculiarly unpleasant. Conscious of my weakness, they were preparing for a spring; I had not even time to halloo for help--to run would be the readiest means of bringing the wretches upon me. My eye swept round the group, and caught sight of something lying half-buried in the snow about ten feet distant. Quick as a flash I sprang, as I never sprang before or since, over the back of a huge fellow who stood before me, and the next instant I was whirling about me the lash of a long whip, cutting to right and left. The Dogs retreated before my blows and the fury of my onset, and then suddenly skulked behind the rocks. The whip had clearly saved my life; there was nothing else within my reach, and it had been dropped there quite accidentally by Katutunah as he went down to the sledges.” The horrible savagery of these poor wretches can hardly be wondered at; they live in a country where there is hardly a chance for them in any independent foraging expedition; they are half-starved by their masters, being fed chiefly on frozen walrus hides in the winter, and allowed to shift for themselves in the summer when their services are not required, and are in so perennial and acute a state of hunger that they are ready at any time to eat their own harness if allowed to do so.