And why, Philip asked himself, did these savage little barbarians
of the north want HER? The fighting she had pictured for him had
not startled him. For a long time the Kogmollocks had been making
trouble. In the last year they had killed a dozen white men along
the upper coast, including two American explorers and a
missionary. Three patrols had been sent to Coronation Gulf and
Bathurst Inlet since August. With the first of those patrols,
headed by Olaf Anderson, the Swede, he had come within an ace of
going himself. A rumor had come down to Churchill just before he
left for the Barrens that Olaf's party of five men had been wiped
out. It was not difficult to understand why the Eskimos had
attacked Celie Armin's father and those who had come ashore with
him from the ship. It was merely a question of lust for white
men's blood and white men's plunder, and strangers in their
country would naturally be regarded as easy victims. The
mysterious and inexplicable part of the affair was their pursuit
of the girl. In this pursuit the Kogmollocks had come far beyond
the southernmost boundary of their hunting grounds. Philip was
sufficiently acquainted with the Eskimos to know that in their
veins ran very little of the red-blooded passion of the white man.
Matehood was more of a necessity imposed by nature than a joy in
their existence, and it was impossible for him to believe that
even Celie Armin's beauty had roused the desire for possession
among them.

His attention turned to the gathering of the storm. The amazing
swiftness with which the gray day was turning into the dark gloom
of night fascinated him and he almost called to Celie that she
might look upon the phenomenon with him. It was piling in from the
vast Barrens to the north and east and for a time it was