He had swallowed one mouthful and was about to tear off another, when Snip intervened with a terrifying snarl between Jan and his food. Jan, who was learning fast, turned also with a snarling growl to ward off Snip's fangs. And in that moment--it was no more than a moment--Bill, the leader, stole and swallowed the whole remainder of Jan's supper. Jean was watching this, and did not try to prevent it. But leaving Jan to settle with Snip, he descended upon Bill with his whip, double-thonged, and administered as sound a trouncing to that hardy warrior as any member of the team had ever received. That ended, Jean swung on his heel and gave Snip the butt of the whip-handle across the top of his nose, and this so shrewdly that Snip's muzzle ached for twenty-four hours, reminding him, every minute of the time, that he must not harry Jan--while his master was in sight. It would have been easy for Jean to have spared another ration of fish for Jan, since in a few more days they would reach a Hudson Bay post at which fresh supplies were to be taken in. But Jean was too wise for this. He preferred that Jan should go hungry because he wanted Jan to learn quickly. Jan educated meant dollars to Jean, and a good many of them. Jan uneducated, or learning but slowly, would, as Jean well knew, very soon mean Jan dead--a mere section of dog-food worth no dollars at all. So Jean laughed at the big hound. "You see, Jan," he said. "You watch um, Jan, an' learn queek--eh? Yes, I think you learn queek." Thus in that little matter of the daily meal, if Jan had gone on making the mistake he made on his first night in the wilderness, not all Jean's authority could have saved him. The rest of the team, by hook or crook, would have kept him food-less and killed him outright long before the slower process of starvation could have released him. But, his first lesson sufficed for Jan. When his next supper came he had done a day and a half's work; he had lived and exerted himself more in that day and a half than during any average month of his previous life. As a consequence, when Bill and Snip looked round for Jan's supper, after bolting their own, they saw a great hound with stiff legs and erect hackles, alert in every hair of his body--but no supper. The supper, very slightly masticated and swallowed with furious haste, was already beginning its task of helping to stiffen Jan's fibers and give fierceness to the lift of his upper lip.