“So swiftly they go, one may not see them,” he observed.

“But many be dead of us,” Tyee went on.

“And many be left,” was the reply.  “And they hug close to the earth, for they have become wise in the fashion of righting.  Further, they are angered.  Moreover, when we have killed the Sunlanders on the ship, there will remain but four on the land.  These may take long to kill, but in the end it will happen.”

“How may we go down to the ship when we cannot go this way or that?” Tyee questioned.

“It is a bad place where lie Bill-Man and his brothers,” Aab-Waak explained.  “We may come upon them from every side, which is not good.  So they aim to get their backs against the cliff and wait until their brothers of the ship come to give them aid.”

“Never shall they come from the ship, their brothers!  I have said it.”

Tyee was gathering courage again, and when the Sunlanders verified the prediction by retreating to the cliff, he was light-hearted as ever.

“There be only three of us!” complained one of the Hungry Folk as they came together for council.

“Therefore, instead of two, shall you have four guns each,” was Tyee’s rejoinder.

“We did good fighting.”

“Ay; and if it should happen that two of you be left, then will you have six guns each.  Therefore, fight well.”

“And if there be none of them left?” Aab-Waak whispered slyly.

“Then will we have the guns, you and I,” Tyee whispered back.

However, to propitiate the Hungry Folk, he made one of them leader of the ship expedition.  This party comprised fully two-thirds of the tribesmen, and departed for the coast, a dozen miles away, laden with skins and things to trade.  The remaining men were disposed in a large half-circle about the breastwork which Bill-Man and his Sunlanders had begun to throw up.  Tyee was quick to note the virtues of things, and at once set his men to digging shallow trenches.

“The time will go before they are aware,” he explained to Aab-Waak; “and their minds being busy, they will not think overmuch of the dead that are, nor gather trouble to themselves.  And in the dark of night they may creep closer, so that when the Sunlanders look forth in the morning light they will find us very near.”

In the midday heat the men ceased from their work and made a meal of dried fish and seal oil which the women brought up.  There was some clamor for the food of the Sunlanders in the igloo of Neegah, but Tyee refused to divide it until the return of the ship party.  Speculations upon the outcome became rife, but in the midst of it a dull boom drifted up over the land from the sea.  The keen-eyed ones made out a dense cloud of smoke, which quickly disappeared, and which they averred was directly over the ship of the Sunlanders.  Tyee was of the opinion that it was a big gun.  Aab-Waak did not know, but thought it might be a signal of some sort.  Anyway, he said, it was time something happened.