Fire!  Out there in the open a seething, twisting mass of it, taunting him with its power, mocking him as pitiless as the mirage mocks a thirst-crazed creature of the desert.  In an hour or two it would be gone.  He might keep up its embers for a time—­until the Eskimos, or starvation, or still greater storm put an end to it.  The effort, in any event, would be futile in the end.  Their one chance lay in finding the other cabin, and reaching it quickly.  When it came to the point of absolute necessity he could at least try to make fire as he had seen an Indian make it once, though at the time he had regarded the achievement as a miracle born of unnumbered generations of practice.

He heard the glad note of welcome in Celie’s throat when he returned to her.  She spoke his name.  It seemed to him that there was no note of fear in her voice, but just gladness that he had come back to her in that pit of darkness.  He bent down and tucked her snugly in the big bear-skin before he took her up in his arms again.  He held her so that her face was snuggled close against his neck, and he kissed her soft mouth again, and whispered to her as he began picking his way through the forest.  His voice, whispering, made her understand that they must make no sound.  She was tightly imprisoned in the skin, but all at once he felt one of her hands work its way out of the warmth of it and lay against his cheek.  It did not move away from his face.  Out of her soul and body there passed through that contact of her hand the confession that made him equal to fighting the world.  For many minutes after that neither of them spoke.  The moan of the wind was growing less and less in the treetops, and once Philip saw a pale break where the clouds had split asunder in the sky.  The storm was at an end—­ and it was almost dawn.  In a quarter of an hour the shot like snow of the blizzard had changed to big soft flakes that dropped straight out of the clouds in a white deluge.  By the time day came their trail would be completely hidden from the eyes of the Eskimos.  Because of that Philip traveled as swiftly as the darkness and the roughness of the forest would allow him.  As nearly as he could judge he kept due east.  For a considerable time he did not feel the weight of the precious burden in his arms.  He believed that they were at least half a mile from the burned cabin before he paused to rest.  Even then he spoke to Celie in a low voice.  He had stopped where the trunk of a fallen tree lay as high as his waist, and on this he seated the girl, holding her there in the crook of his arm.  With his other hand he fumbled to see if the bearskin protected her fully, and in the investigation his hand came in contact again with one of her bare feet.  Celie gave a little jump.  Then she laughed, and he made sure that the foot was snug and warm before he went on.