What seemed hours followed, and at last he could stand it no longer. He fastened the galley door, took his repeating rifle under his arm, and marched down the hard drifted snow off the Bowhead in the direction of the igloos. As he did so, far off on the ice to the northward two great white bears lifted their noses and sniffed the wind, which blew from the south. On it came a faint odor of fish, always enough to attract any white bear, but this odor was more appetizing than any the two had ever smelled before. The salmon kettle was doing its work. Warily the two great creatures took their way southward over the rough ice. At the igloos Harry’s call for Joe was answered by the furry Eskimo head of Harluk. He put this carefully out from the tunnel-like entrance and calmly said Joe was no more. He was a good man and a noble friend, but he was no longer even a spirit. The ghost wolves had no doubt eaten him, and thereby he became as nothing. Killed in battle, eaten by real wolves, his spirit would yet remain, but when the ghost wolves of the Nunatak people got a man, he simply vanished. If Harry did not wish to vanish, it would be well for him to come into the igloo. Harry took Harluk by the shoulders and pulled the rest of him out into the moonlight. “Look here, Harluk,” he said. “You stop this nonsense, and tell me where Joe is. Is he with you? If not, where did he go? Tell me and tell me quick.” Like cures like, says the old adage. Harry’s manner was so fierce that he frightened his dusky friend, and for a moment drove some of the superstitious fear out of him. He spoke to the point when he got his breath. Joe, he said, had gone out with Kroo to bait the ghost wolves. In this direction they had gone, over toward the ridge. Kroo had come back, Joe had not. This was long ago. “Harluk,” said Harry, “you get that repeating rifle that we gave you, load it, and come with me. Tell Kroo to come, too, and bring his gun and Konwa. The others shall stay with the women and children.”