And in the dreary days that followed, and in the wild nights when they pushed the trenches closer, there was much discussion as to the wisdom of letting the Sunlanders go.  But of this they were afraid, and the women raised a cry always at the thought This much they had seen of the Sunlanders; they cared to see no more.  All the time the whistle and blub-blub of bullets filled the air, and all the time the death-list grew.  In the golden sunrise came the faint, far crack of a rifle, and a stricken woman would throw up her hands on the distant edge of the village; in the noonday heat, men in the trenches heard the shrill sing-song and knew their deaths; or in the gray afterglow of evening, the dirt kicked up in puffs by the winking fires.  And through the nights the long “Wah-hoo-ha-a wah-hoo-ha-a!” of mourning women held dolorous sway.

As Tyee had promised, in the end famine gripped the Sunlanders.  And once, when an early fall gale blew, one of them crawled through the darkness past the trenches and stole many dried fish.

But he could not get back with them, and the sun found him vainly hiding in the village.  So he fought the great fight by himself, and in a narrow ring of Mandell Folk shot four with his revolver, and ere they could lay hands on him for the torture, turned it on himself and died.

This threw a gloom upon the people.  Oloof put the question, “If one man die so hard, how hard will die the three who yet are left?”

Then Mesahchie stood up on the barricade and called in by name three dogs which had wandered close,—­meat and life,—­which set back the day of reckoning and put despair in the hearts of the Mandell Folk.  And on the head of Mesahchie were showered the curses of a generation.

The days dragged by.  The sun hurried south, the nights grew long and longer, and there was a touch of frost in the air.  And still the Sunlanders held the pit.  Hearts were breaking under the unending strain, and Tyee thought hard and deep.  Then he sent forth word that all the skins and hides of all the tribe be collected.  These he had made into huge cylindrical bales, and behind each bale he placed a man.

When the word was given the brief day was almost spent, and it was slow work and tedious, rolling the big bales forward foot by foot The bullets of the Sunlanders blub-blubbed and thudded against them, but could not go through, and the men howled their delight But the dark was at hand, and Tyee, secure of success, called the bales back to the trenches.

In the morning, in the face of an unearthly silence from the pit, the real advance began.  At first with large intervals between, the bales slowly converged as the circle drew in.  At a hundred yards they were quite close together, so that Tyee’s order to halt was passed along in whispers.  The pit showed no sign of life.  They watched long and sharply, but nothing stirred.  The advance was taken up and the manoeuvre repeated at fifty yards.  Still no sign nor sound.  Tyee shook his head, and even Aab-Waak was dubious.  But the order was given to go on, and go on they did, till bale touched bale and a solid rampart of skin and hide bowed out from the cliff about the pit and back to the cliff again.