“Aveq tedicksoah!  A great many walrus,” echoed Arnaluk. “Aveq tedicksoah!  Walrus too many to count!”

They stopped their work and gathered in a group, Papik before them, his arms pointing toward the sea.  His eyes glistened.

To the south, Im-nag-i-na, the entrance to the polar sea, was hidden by grayish mists which, as they shifted across the sun, palpitated with running streaks of gold.  From the veiled distance the sound of a glacier exploding pealed over the waters like the muffled roar of artillery.  The sun, magnified into a great swimming disc by the rising vapors, poured a rich and colorful light over the sea—­it was a light without warmth.  In the turquoise sky overhead, the moving clouds changed in hue from crimson to silver, and straggling flecks, like diaphanous ribbons, became stained with mottled dyes.  Against the horizon, the arctic armada of eternally moving icebergs drifted slowly southward and, like the spectral ships of the long dead Norsemen who had braved these regions, flaunted the semblance of silver-gleaming sails.  The sea rose in great green emerald swells, the wave crests broke in seething curls of silver foam, and in the troughs of descending waters glittered cascades of celestial jewels.  It was late summer—­the hour, midnight.

The keen eyes of the natives searched the seas.

To the south of where the watchers were gathered, the glacial heels of the inland mountains step precipitously into the sea and rise to a height of several thousand feet.  At the base of these iron rocks, corroded with the rust of interminable ages, the fragments of great floes, like catapults, are tossed by the inrushing sea.  Above, in summertime, rises and falls constantly a black mist resembling shifting cloud smoke.  Millions of auks swarm from their moss-ensconced grottos; an oppressive clamor beats the air.  Along the ocean, where crevices of the descending iron-chiselled cliffs are fugitively green with ribbons of pale grass, downy-winged ducks purr, mating guillemots coo incessantly, and tremulous oogzooks chirrup joyously to their young.

As the natives listened, a deep nasal bellowing from the far ocean trembled in the air.

Not a man stirred.  The sound vibrated into silence.  The auks screamed.  Hawks shrilled.  From the far interior valleys came the echoed wolf-howling of Eskimo dogs.  There the mountain tops, perpetually covered with ice and snow, gleamed through the clouds with running colors of amaranth, green and mottled gold.  The air swam with frigid fire.  As the tribe stood in silence along the shore, a roar as of gatling guns pealed from the mist-hidden heights.  After a taut moment of silence, a frightened scream rose from every living thing on land and sea.  Yet the group of men only bent their heads.  Then, like an undertone in the chorus of animate life, their quick ears detected the long-drawn, hoarse call of walrus bulls.  The howls of the dogs from the distant mountain passes came nearer.  More distant receded the stertorous nasal bellow on the sea.