That is why I had come up from my warm bunk at midnight to sit alone on the taffrail, listening in the keen air to the howling that made me shiver, spite of myself, and watching in the vague moonlight to understand if possible what the brutes felt amid the primal silence and desolation.

A long interval of profound stillness had passed, and I could just make out the circle of dogs sitting on their tails on the open shore, when suddenly, faint and far away, an unearthly howl came rolling down the mountains, ooooooo-ow-wow-wow! a long wailing crescendo beginning softly, like a sound in a dream, and swelling into a roar that waked the sleeping echoes and set them jumping like startled goats from crag to crag.  Instantly the huskies answered, every clog breaking out into indescribable frenzied wailings, as a collie responds in agony to certain chords of music that stir all the old wolf nature sleeping within him.  For five minutes the uproar was appalling; then it ceased abruptly and the huskies ran wildly here and there among the rocks.  From far away an answer, an echo perhaps of their wailing, or, it may be, the cry of the dogs of St. Margaret’s, came ululating over the deep.  Then silence again, vast and unnatural, settling over the gloomy land like a winding-sheet.

As the unknown howl trembled faintly in the air Noel, who had slept undisturbed through all the clamor of the dogs, stirred uneasily by the foremast.  As it deepened and swelled into a roar that filled all the night he threw off the caribou skin and came aft to where I was watching alone.  “Das Wayeeses.  I know dat hwulf; he follow me one time, oh, long, long while ago,” he whispered.  And taking my marine glasses he stood beside me watching intently.

[Illustration:  “The terrible howl of the great white wolf”]

There was another long period of waiting; our eyes grew weary, filled as they were with shadows and uncertainties in the moonlight, and we turned our ears to the hills, waiting with strained, silent expectancy for the challenge.  Suddenly Noel pointed upward and my eye caught something moving swiftly on the crest of the mountain.  A shadow with the slinking trot of a wolf glided along the ridge between us and the moon.  Just in front of us it stopped, leaped upon a big rock, turned a pointed nose up to the sky, sharp and clear as a fir top in the moonlight, and—­ooooooo-ow-wow-wow! the terrible howl of a great white wolf tumbled down on the husky dogs and set them howling as if possessed.  No doubt now of their queer actions which had puzzled me for hours past.  The wild wolf had called and the tame wolves waked to answer.  Before my dull ears had heard a rumor of it they were crazy with the excitement.  Now every chord in their wild hearts was twanging its thrilling answer to the leader’s summons, and my own heart awoke and thrilled as it never did before to the call of a wild beast.

For an hour or more the old wolf sat there, challenging his degenerate mates in every silence, calling the tame to be wild, the bound to be free again, and listening gravely to the wailing answer of the dogs, which refused with groanings, as if dragging themselves away from overmastering temptation.  Then the shadow vanished from the big rock on the mountain, the huskies fled away wildly from the shore, and only the sob of the breakers broke the stillness.