As they stood, two gray, shaggy forms sprang out of the storm, and would have fallen upon the dead caribou, but seeing the boys they hesitated and drew back with red tongues hanging from between their gleaming white teeth. A shot from the rifle laid one low, and the other vanished like a flash. They were gray wolves, which always hang about the flank of the caribou herds and fall upon the weak or wounded. Half frozen as the boys were, they skinned and cut up the caribou the first thing. Then in the shelter of the gulley they set up their tent, and with their meat and sled-load inside it banked it deep in the drift. For the dogs they dug a snow igloo and made them fast to the sled, with which they blocked the entrance to it. Thus the dogs, well fed on deer meat, had shelter sufficient for their needs in spite of the blizzard. They themselves were snug in the little tent banked deep in the drift. There was no chance to get wood for fuel, but here they learned the wisdom of Harluk, who had insisted that they make a part of their load a seal poke of blubber and a rude lamp. With this they toasted caribou steak, and it added to the warmth of their den. [Illustration: TOILING ON THROUGH THE DRIFTS] The storm continued for a week, the third since their departure, and when it broke and they struggled on through the deep drifts, they at once realized that their progress must be slow indeed. Yet, after all, they made about ten miles a day by patient toil, one going ahead and breaking a road for the dogs, the other following the sled and helping it along. They had ten days of beautiful weather, too, and at their end they guessed that they had made, altogether, nearly two hundred miles south. It was early October now, with the Arctic winter well upon them, yet they did not suffer from the cold, so well had they learned Eskimo methods of defense against it. To their great delight, about this time they began to find timber. It was small, it is true, and consisted of scattered clumps of little birches and alders, with here and there a pigmy fir. They danced and shouted about this first fir till the dogs no doubt thought them “molokully.” It seemed like an outpost of the home land of trees, real trees! They had seen none for a year and a half, and were fairly homesick for timber. They had wood now for their cooking, yet the timber was a hindrance to them. The wind-swept and hardened snow gave way under its protection to soft and fluffy drifts, which made the traveling far more difficult. And about this time they caught another storm. A genuine blizzard, this was, with some fall of snow, but mainly wind and cold. They were obliged to camp, as before, nor did the gale let up for three weeks. It was maddening, but there was no help for it. These terrific Arctic gales sometimes last for literal months, and they were fortunate to escape as they did.