Joe and Harry entered the igloo and sat down on the bench. The doorway was not blocked again, but the two Ankuts stood just outside, rifle in hand, as if on guard. A little later one of the Eskimo servants appeared bearing on a flat slate stone the head of an old seal. This he placed on the floor in the middle of the igloo, looking appealingly at the boys, but hastening away without a word. Then two Ankuts appeared, each leading by the leash three heavy-chested, wide-jawed dogs that snarled and fought one another as they came. These six dogs were hurriedly released at the igloo door and driven in. Then the Ankuts again blocked the entrance with the heavy, flat slate stones, making it much more secure than before; so secure, in fact, that escape from within would be well-nigh impossible. Then one of them cried out in a loud, jeering voice:— “This is the feast, O white men, to which you are bidden,—the feast of the old seal’s head. Eat and be merry,—and there shall be nothing but bones left.” The sound of retreating footsteps was drowned in the snarling and scrambling of the six wolf dogs, already fighting in a blurred mass in the centre of the igloo over the old seal’s head. The Eskimo wolf dog that one sees in Arctic Alaska is quite different from the Eskimo dog of the Yukon and the lower mining camps on the great northwest possession. The latter are more often mongrels, interbred with all sorts of dogs from civilization, and lack much of the robust fierceness of the Arctic type. On the desolate northern shores the pure type is much like the gray wolf, and is no doubt a descendant from him, sometimes intermixed with latter-day blood from the same source. Indeed, it used to be no uncommon thing in the Eskimo villages to see a captured wolf tied to a stake in the village and used for breeding purposes. The usual color is a dingy gray black; sometimes almost pure black, as is the occasional wolf. These dogs are large, very agile, and have a jaw that is full of great teeth and as strong as iron. Ordinarily, when well fed, they are not vicious; oftentimes they are even frolicsome, like the civilized dog; yet such is the strength of their iron jaws that even a playful nip from them is a serious matter, and hence the Eskimos never encourage them to sportiveness. Neither do white men who have once experienced a grip from those jaws. Their wolf blood, while making them hardy and strong, gives them an understrain of fierceness which is apt to make them dangerous neighbors, especially when hungry. Their fights among themselves are tremendous and bloody, and at such times a man who would separate them must enter the combat armed with a heavy weapon capable of laying one out at a blow. Otherwise his own life is in danger. It was six magnificent specimens of this type that were walled into the igloo with the boys and were already battling fiercely at the feast of the old seal’s head. Purposely left unfed since the boys arrived, they