The snowhouse was full of a beautiful pale-blue light.

"Just at this particular moment a little herd of walrus--two old bulls
and four cows with their fat, oily-looking calves--came sprawling,
floundering and grunting by. They were quite out of place on land, of
course, but for some reason known only to themselves they were crossing
over the narrow neck of low ground from another bay, half a mile away.
Perhaps the ice pack had been jammed in by wind and current on that side,
filling the shallow bay to the bottom and cutting the walrus off from
their feeding grounds. If not that, then it was some other equally
urgent reason, or the massive beasts, who can move on land only by a
series of violent and exhausting flops, would never have undertaken an
enterprise so formidable as a half-mile overland journey. They were
accomplishing it, however, with a vast deal of groaning and wheezing and
deep-throated grunting, when they arrived at the end of the crevice
wherein the snowhouse baby and his mother were concealed.

"Lifting their huge, whiskered and tusked heads, and plunging forward
laboriously on their awkward nippers, the two old bulls went by, followed
by the ponderous cows with their lumpy, rolling calves. The hindermost
cow, a few feet to the right of the herd, came so close to the end of the
crevice that the edge of the snow gave way and her left nipper slipped
into it, throwing her forward upon her side. As she struggled to recover
herself, close beside her the snow was heaved up, and a terrible,
grinning white head emerged, followed by gigantic shoulders and huge,
claw-armed, battling paws.

"This sudden and dreadful apparition startled the walrus cow into new
vigor, so that with a convulsive plunge she tore herself free of the
pitfall. For a couple of seconds the old bear towered above her, with