From the thrilling spectacle of the giant mad-man charging over the plain behind his ravenous beasts Philip shifted his amazed gaze to the Eskimos.  They were no longer concealing themselves.  Palsied by a strange terror, they were staring at the onrushing horde and the shrieking wolf-man.  In those first appalling moments of horror and stupefaction not a gun was raised or a shot fired.  Then there rose from the ranks of the Kogmollocks a strange and terrible cry, and in another moment the plain between the forest and the snow-ridge was alive with fleeing creatures in whose heavy brains surged the monstrous thought that they were attacked not by man and beast, but by devils.  And in that same moment it seemed that Bram Johnson and his wolves were among them.  From man to man the beasts leapt, driven on by the shrieking voice of their master; and now Philip saw the giant mad-man overtake one after another of the running figures, and saw the crushing force of his club as it fell.  Celie swayed back from the wall and stood with her hands to her face.  The Swede sprang past her, flung back the bar to the door, and opened it.  Philip was a step behind him.  Prom the front of the cabin they began firing, and man after man crumpled down under their shots.  If Bram and his wolves sensed the shooting in the ferocity of their blood-lust they paid no more attention to it than to the cries for mercy that rose chokingly out of the throats of their enemies.  In another sixty seconds the visible part of it was over.  The last of the Kogmollocks disappeared into the edge of the forest.  After them went the wolf-man and his pack.

Philip faced his companion.  His gun was hot—­and empty.  The old grin was in Olaf’s face.  In spite of it he shuddered.

“We won’t follow,” he said.  “Bram and his wolves will attend to the trimmings, and he’ll come back when the job is finished.  Meanwhile we’ll get a little start for home, eh?  I’m tired of this cabin.  Forty days and nights—­ugh! it was hell.  Have you a spare pipeful of tobacco, Phil?  If you have—­let’s see, where did I leave off in that story about Princess Celie and the Duke of Rugni?”

“The—­the—­what?”

“Your tobaeco, Phil!”

In a dazed fashion Philip handed his tobacco pouch to the Swede.

“You said—­Princess Celie—­the Duke of Rugni—­”

Olaf nodded as he stuffed his pipe bowl.

“That’s it.  Armin is the Duke of Rugni, whatever Rugni is.  He was chased off to Siberia a good many years ago, when Celie was a kid, that somebody else could get hold of the Dukedom.  Understand?  Millions in it, I suppose.  He says some of Rasputin’s old friends were behind it, and that for a long time he was kept in the dungeons of the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, with the Neva River running over his head.  The friends he had, most of them in exile or chased out of the country, thought he was dead, and some of these friends were caring for Celie.  Just after Rasputin was killed, and before the Revolution broke out, they learned Armin was alive and dying by inches somewhere up on the Siberian coast.  Celie’s mother was Danish—­died almost before Celie could remember; but some of her relatives and a bunch of Russian exiles in London framed up a scheme to get Armin back, chartered a ship, sailed with Celie on board, and—­”