A loud hail, in the voice of a Sunlander, rent the silence, and a shot rang out.  Then an uproar broke loose inside the igloo.  Without premeditation, the circle swept forward into the passageway.  On the inside, half a dozen repeating rifles began to chatter, and the Mandells, jammed in the confined space, were powerless.  Those at the front strove madly to retreat from the fire-spitting guns in their very faces, and those in the rear pressed as madly forward to the attack.  The bullets from the big 45:90’s drove through half a dozen men at a shot, and the passageway, gorged with surging, helpless men, became a shambles.  The rifles, pumped without aim into the mass, withered it away like a machine gun, and against that steady stream of death no man could advance.

“Never was there the like!” panted one of the Hungry Folk.  “I did but look in, and the dead were piled like seals on the ice after a killing!”

“Did I not say, mayhap, they were fighters?” cackled the weazened old hunter.

“It was to be expected,” Aab-Waak answered stoutly.  “We fought in a trap of our making.”

“O ye fools!” Tyee chided.  “Ye sons of fools!  It was not planned, this thing ye have done.  To Neegah and the six young men only was it given to go inside.  My cunning is superior to the cunning of the Sunlanders, but ye take away its edge, and rob me of its strength, and make it worse than no cunning at all!”

No one made reply, and all eyes centred on the igloo, which loomed vague and monstrous against the clear northeast sky.  Through a hole in the roof the smoke from the rifles curled slowly upward in the pulseless air, and now and again a wounded man crawled painfully through the gray.

“Let each ask of his neighbor for Neegah and the six young men,” Tyee commanded.

And after a time the answer came back, “Neegah and the six young men are not.”

“And many more are not!” wailed a woman to the rear.

“The more wealth for those who are left,” Tyee grimly consoled.  Then, turning to Aab-Waak, he said:  “Go thou, and gather together many sealskins filled with oil.  Let the hunters empty them on the outside wood of the igloo and of the passage.  And let them put fire to it ere the Sunlanders make holes in the igloo for their guns.”

Even as he spoke a hole appeared in the dirt plastered between the logs, a rifle muzzle protruded, and one of the Hungry Folk clapped hand to his side and leaped in the air.  A second shot, through the lungs, brought him to the ground.  Tyee and the rest scattered to either side, out of direct range, and Aab-Waak hastened the men forward with the skins of oil.  Avoiding the loopholes, which were making on every side of the igloo, they emptied the skins on the dry drift-logs brought down by the Mandell River from the tree-lands to the south.  Ounenk ran forward with a blazing brand, and the flames leaped upward.  Many minutes passed, without sign, and they held their weapons ready as the fire gained headway.