4 
Northern Trails . Book I 
Wild Duck swung to her anchor, veering nervously 
in the tide rip, tugging impatiently and clanking her 
chains as if eager to be out again in the turmoil. At 
sunset the gale blew itself out, and presently the moon 
wheeled full and clear over the dark mountains. 
Noel, my big Indian, was curled up asleep in a 
caribou skin by the foremast; and the crew were all 
below asleep, every man glad in his heart to be once 
more safe in a snug harbor. All about us stretched 
the desolate wastes of sea and mountains, over which 
silence and darkness brooded, as over the first great 
chaos. Near at hand were the black rocks, eternally wet 
and smoking with the fog and gale; beyond towered 
the icebergs, pale, cold, glittering like spires of silver 
in the moonlight; far away, like a vague shadow, a 
handful of little gray houses clung like barnacles to the 
base of a great bare hill whose foot was in the sea and 
whose head wavered among the clouds of heaven. Not 
a light shone, not a sound or a sign of life came from 
these little houses, whose shells close daily at twilight 
over the life within, weary with the day’s work. Only 
the dogs were restless — those strange creatures that 
shelter in our houses and share our bread, yet live in 
another world, a dumb, silent, lonely world shut out 
from ours by impassable barriers. 
For hours these uncanny dogs had puzzled me, a score 
of vicious, hungry brutes that drew the sledges in winter 
