Tearing the deer skin parka from her shoulders and standing before them
in her purple pajamas, she began again the motion and the song. Slow,
dreamy, fantastic was the dance and with it a chant as weird as the song
of the north wind. "Woo-woo-woo." It grew in volume. The motion
quickened. Her feet touched the floor as lightly as feathers. Her
swaying arms made a circle of purple about her. Then, as she spun round
and round, her whole body seemed a purple pillar of fire.

At that instant a strange thing happened. As the natives, their minds
completely absorbed by the spell of the dance, watched and listened,
they saw the purple pillar rise suddenly toward the ceiling. Nor did it
pause, but mounting straight up, with a vaulting whirl disappeared from
sight.

Overcome by the hypnotic spell of the dance, the natives sat motionless
for a moment. Then the bark of a dog outside broke the spell. With a mad
shout: "Pee-le-uk-tuk Pee-le-uk-tuk!" (Gone! Gone!) they rushed to the
entrance, trampling upon and hindering one another in their haste.

* * * * *

When Johnny reached the piling ice, on his way across the Strait, he at
first gave his entire attention to picking a pathway. Indeed this was
quite necessary, for here a great pan of ice, thirty yards square and
eight feet thick, glided upon another of the same tremendous proportions
to rear into the air and crumble down, a ponderous avalanche of ice
cakes and snow. He must leap nimbly from cake to cake. He must take
advantage of every rise and fall of the heaving swells which disturbed
the great blanket winter had cast upon the bosom of the deep.