Hour after hour the journey continued. The plain was level as a floor,
and at intervals Dolores would run in the trail that the load might be
lightened and the dogs might make better time. It was then that Peter
watched Uppy with the revolver, and it was also in these
intervals--running close beside the woman--that the blood in Wapi's veins
was fired with a riotous joy.

For three hours there was almost no slackening in Uppy's speed. The
fourth and fifth were slower. In the sixth and seventh the pace began to
tell. And the plain was no longer hard and level, swept like a floor by
the polar winds. Rolling undulations grew into ridges of snow and ice; in
places the dogs dragged the sledge over thin crusts that broke under the
runners; fields of drift snow, fine as shot, lay in their way; and in the
eighth hour Uppy stopped the lagging dogs and held up his two hands in
the mute signal of the Eskimo that they could go no farther without a
rest.

Wapi dropped on his belly and watched. His eyes followed Uppy
suspiciously as he strung up the tent on its whalebone supports to keep
the bite of the wind from the sledge on which Dolores sat at Peter's
feet. Then Uppy built a fire of kindlings, and scraped up a pot of ice
for tea-water. After that, while the water was heating, he gave each of
the trace dogs a frozen fish. Dolores herself picked out one of the
largest and tossed it to Wapi. Then she sat down again and began to talk
to Peter, bundled up in his furs. After a time they ate, and drank hot
tea, and after he had devoured a chunk of raw meat the size of his two
fists, Uppy rolled himself in his sleeping bag near the dogs. A little at
a time Wapi dragged himself nearer until his head lay on Dolores' coat.
After that there was a long silence broken only by the low voices of the
woman and the man, and the heavy breathing of the tired dogs. Wapi