Peter was speaking to her.  “Blake’s dogs are tired,” he was saying.  “They were just about to camp, and ours have had a rest.  Perhaps—­”

“We shall beat them!” she interrupted him.  “See how fast we are going, Peter!  It is splendid!”

A rifle-shot sounded behind them.  It was not far away, and involuntarily she clutched him tighter.  Peter reached up a hand.

“Give me the revolver, Dolores.”

“No,” she protested.  “They are not going to overtake us.”

“You must give me the revolver,” he insisted.

“Peter, I can’t.  You understand, I can’t.  I must keep the revolver.”

She looked back again.  There was no doubt now.  Their pursuers were drawing nearer.  She heard a voice, the la-looing of running Eskimos, a faint shout which she knew was a white man’s shout—­and another rifle shot.  Wapi was running nearer.  He was almost at the tail of the sledge, and his red eyes were fixed on her as he ran.

“Wapi!” she cried.  “Wapi!”

His jaws dropped agape.  She could hear his panting response to her voice.

A third shot—­over their heads sped a strange droning sound.

“Wapi,” she almost screamed, “go back!  Sick ’em, Wapi—­sick ’em—­sick ’em—­sick ’em!” She flung out her arms, driving him back, repeating the words over and over again.  She leaned over the edge of the sledge, clinging to the gee-bar.  “Go back, Wapi!  Sick ’em—­sick ’em—­sick ’em!”

As if in response to her wild exhortation, there came a sudden yelping outcry from the team behind.  It was close upon them now.  Another ten minutes.

And then she saw that Wapi was dropping behind.  Quickly he was swallowed up in the starlit chaos of the night.

“Peter,” she cried, sobbingly.  “Peter!”

Listening to the retreating sound of the sledge, Wapi stood a silent shadow in the trail.  Then he turned and faced the north.  He heard the other sound now, and ahead of it the wind brought him a smell, the smell of things he hated.  For many years something had been fighting itself toward understanding within him, and the yelping of dogs and the taint in the air of creatures who had been his slave-masters narrowed his instinct to the one vital point.  Again it was not a process of reason but the cumulative effect of things that had happened, and were happening.  He had scented menace when first he had given warning of the nearness of pursuers, and this menace was no longer an elusive and unseizable thing that had merely stirred the fires of his hatred.  It was now a near and physical fact.  He had tried to run away from it—­with the woman—­but it had followed and was overtaking him, and the yelping dogs were challenging him to fight as they had challenged him from the day he was old enough to take his own part.  And now he had something to fight for.  His intelligence gripped the fact that one sledge was running away from the other, and that the sledge which was running away was his sledge—­and that for his sledge he must fight.