Another sound had drawn Celie back to the door.  “When she looked in the man she had stunned with the club was moving.  Her call brought Philip, and placing her in the open door to keep watch he set swiftly to work to make sure of their prisoner.  With the babiche thong he had taken from his enemies he bound him hand and foot.  A shaft of light fell full on the giant’s face and naked chest where it had been laid bare in the struggle and Philip was about to rise when a purplish patch, of tattooing caught his eyes.  He made out first the crude picture of a shark with huge gaping jaws struggling under the weight of a ship’s anchor, and then, directly under this pigment colored tatu, the almost invisible letters of a name.  He made them out one by one—­B-l-a-k-e.  Before the surname was the letter G.

“Blake,” he repeated, rising to his feet.  “George Blake—­a sailor —­and a white man!”

Blake, returning to consciousness, mumbled incoherently.  In the same instant Celie cried out excitedly at the door.

“Oo-ee, Philip—­Philip!  Se det!  Se!  Se!”

She drew back with, a sudden movement and pointed out the door.  Concealing himself as much as possible from outside observation Philip peered forth.  Not more than a hundred and fifty yards away a dog team was approaching.  There were eight dogs and instantly he recognized them as the small fox-faced Eskimo breed from the coast.  They were dragging a heavily laden sledge and behind them came the driver, a furred and hooded figure squat of stature and with a voice that came now in the sharp clacking commands that Philip had heard in the company of Bram Johnson.  From the floor came a groan, and for an instant Philip turned to find Blake’s bloodshot eyes wide open and staring at him.  The giant’s bleeding lips were gathered in a snarl and he was straining at the babiche thongs that bound him.  In that same moment Philip caught a glimpse of Celie.  She, too, was staring—­and at Blake.  Her lips were parted, her eyes were big with amazement and as she looked she clutched her hands convulsively at her breast and uttered a low, strange cry.  For the first time she saw Blake’s face with the light full upon it.  At the sound of her cry Blake’s eyes went to her, and for the space of a second the imprisoned beast on the floor and the girl looking down on him made up a tableau that held Philip spellbound.  Between them was recognition—­an amazed and stone like horror on the girl’s part, a sudden and growing glare of bestial exultation in the eyes of the man.

Suddenly there came the Eskimo’s voice and the yapping of dogs.  It was the first Blake had heard.  He swung his head toward the door with a great gasp and the babiche cut like whipcord under the strain of his muscles.  Swift as a flash Philip thrust the muzzle of the big Colt against his prisoner’s head.

“Make a sound and you’re a dead man, Blake!” he warned.  “We need that team, and if you so much as whisper during the next ten seconds I’ll scatter your brains over the floor!”