“It’s not him they want—­it’s Bill!  They’re after Bill, out there!  That was Bill trying to get in. . . .  Why didn’t yer open?  It was Bill, I tell yer!”

At the first word the Snipe had wheeled right-about-face, and stood now, pointing, and shaking like a man with ague.

“Matey . . . for the love of God . . .”

“I won’t hush.  There’s something wrong here to-night.  I can’t sleep.  It’s Bill, I tell yer.  See his poor hammock up there shaking. . . .”

Cooney tumbled out with an oath and a thud.  “Hush it, you white-livered swine!  Hush it, or by—­” His hand went behind him to his knife-sheath.

“Dan Cooney”—­the Gaffer closed his book and leaned out—­“go back to your bed.”

“I won’t, Sir.  Not unless—­”

“Go back.”

“Flesh and blood—­”

“Go back.”  And for the third time that night Cooney went back.

The Gaffer leaned a little farther over the ledge, and addressed the sick man.

“George, I went to Bill’s grave not six hours agone.  The snow on it wasn’t even disturbed.  Neither beast nor man, but only God, can break up the hard earth he lies under.  I tell you that, and you may lay to it.  Now go to sleep.”

Long Ede crouched on the frozen ridge of the hut, with his feet in the sleeping-bag, his knees drawn up, and the two guns laid across them.  The creature, whatever its name, that had tried the door, was nowhere to be seen; but he decided to wait a few minutes on the chance of a shot; that is, until the cold should drive him below.  For the moment the clear tingling air was doing him good.  The truth was Long Ede had begun to be afraid of himself, and the way his mind had been running for the last forty-eight hours upon green fields and visions of spring.  As he put it to himself, something inside his head was melting.  Biblical texts chattered within him like running brooks, and as they fleeted he could almost smell the blown meadow-scent.  “Take us the foxes, the little foxes . . . for our vines have tender grapes . . .  A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon . . .  Awake, O north wind, and come, thou south . . . blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out . . .”  He was light-headed, and he knew it.  He must hold out.  They were all going mad; were, in fact, three parts crazed already, all except the Gaffer.  And the Gaffer relied on him as his right-hand man.  One glimpse of the returning sun—­one glimpse only—­might save them yet.

He gazed out over the frozen hills, and northward across the ice-pack.  A few streaks of pale violet—­the ghost of the Aurora—­fronted the moon.  He could see for miles.  Bear or fox, no living creature was in sight.  But who could tell what might be hiding behind any one of a thousand hummocks?  He listened.  He heard the slow grinding of the ice-pack off the beach:  only that.  “Take us the foxes, the little foxes. . .”