"With heads held high and expanded nostrils quivering in readiness to
catch scent of danger, they came on very slowly yet not without a great
deal of high stepping and of prancing, with a sort of rhythmical
dancing motion. Every now and then they threw their heads down, then
up, and then held them rigid again. They were brave enough to come
within sixty or seventy paces and even a little closer. But as ill
luck ordained, while I was waiting for a better chance to bring down
one of them with my old flint-lock, they caught scent of me, and
suddenly falling back--almost upon their haunches--as though they had
been struck upon the head, they wheeled round, then fled in alarm to
the main body. Then, as caribou usually do, the whole band began
leaping three or four feet into the air--much as they sometimes do when
hit by a bullet. Then, too, with tails up they swept away at full
gallop and, entering the forest beyond, were lost to view.

"It was a great disappointment, my son, and I became so disheartened
that I made but a poor attempt to trail them that day. That evening,
when I lay down to rest upon the edge of a muskeg, the moon was already
shining; and by midnight the cold was so intense that the frost-bitten
trees went off with such bangs that I was startled out of my slumber.
It was then that I discovered a pack of eight wolves silently romping
about in the snow of the muskeg--just like a lot of young dogs. Their
antics interested me and it was some time before I fell asleep again.

"In the morning, though a heavy rime (frozen mist) was falling and
though it was so thick that it obliterated the surrounding forest, I
set out again in search of game tracks, and having crossed the muskeg,
not only found the tracks of many caribou, but learned, too, that the
eight wolves were now trailing the deer in earnest.