For hours the hunters continued the trail.  Their mighty purpose fought off fatigue.  The moon passed behind cumulous mountains of clouds along the horizon, and periods of darkness blotted the world from Ootah.  Then they traveled in darkness.  A chill dampness rising from the gaping abysses that sundered the ice field told them of their danger; then Ootah’s heart chilled, his teeth were set chattering; but he thought of Annadoah and the grim need of food, and he gripped the upstander of his sled more determinedly.  When the moon again unclosed its pearly sheen over the ice, the serpentine chasms moved their tortuous backs and writhed about them, the icy hummocks billowed, and the glittering ice-peaked horizon swam in a dizzy circle of diamonded light.

As their trail ascended higher the penetrating cold dampness somewhat moderated.  In the taut air the sound of their whips was like that of splitting metal.  Shuddering and sepulchral echoes answered the barking of their dogs.  The faithful ghosts of the dogs of fallen hunters were following their departed masters in the amethystine mists of the canyons about them.  Ootah and Koolotah trembled with the thought of the dreadful nearness of the dead.  Believing other animals to be ahead, the dogs set up a wilder, shriller howling.  Then the echoes came back with more startling and terrifying proximity.  Ootah’s flesh crept.  Finally, with an explosive sound, Koolotah let his whip fall.

“Aulate—­halt!” he called.

They came to a dead standstill.

“Pst!” he whispered.  He hit the snapping, whining dogs. “Pst!” They crouched to the ground and whined mournfully.

“Dost thou hear?” Koolotah asked in a hushed voice.  In the moonlight Ootah saw that the lad’s face was as white as the face of the dead, and that in his eyes was a wild fear.  From the mountain ridges, which loomed beyond, came an ominous noise—­resembling a low wind.  Ootah bent his head and listened to the sobbing monotone, then whispered: 

“The breathing of the spirits of the hills who sleep.”

“Perchance we waken them,” Koolotah ventured.

“That would be bad,” Ootah replied.

“I have left my mother forever,” Koolotah wailed.

“Be brave, lad; they need food; beseech the spirits of those who lived when men’s sap was stronger, thy ancestors, for strength.  Come!”

Koolotah raised his head—­then uttered a low cry of alarm.  He drew back, fearfully, pointing with a trembling arm to the mountain pass ahead.

Covered with glacial snow and ice the slopes of the first ridge of the interior mountains gleamed with frosted silver.  Over the white expanse, formed by the countless clefts and indentations of the slope, cyclopean shadows took form, and like eldritch figures joining their hands in a wild dance, loomed terrifyingly before the two men.  Their trail now ascended through a gorge which abruptly opened immediately before them.  Into this rugged chasm the argent moonlight poured, and from unseen caverns in the pass glowered monstrous phosphorescent green and ruby eyes.