Nicholas wouldn’t let the Boy undo his pack.

“No, we come back,” he said, adding something in his own tongue to the company, and then crawled out, followed by the Boy.  Their progress was slow, for the Boy’s “Canadian webfeet” had been left in the Kachime, and he sank in the snow at every step.  Twice in the dusk he stumbled over an ighloo, or a sled, or some sign of humanity, and asked of the now silent, preoccupied Nicholas, “Who lives here?” The answer had been, “Nobody; all dead.”

The Boy was glad to see approaching, at last, a human figure.  It came shambling through the snow, with bent head and swaying, jerking gait, looked up suddenly and sheered off, flitting uncertainly onward, in the dim light, like a frightened ghost.

“Who is that?”

“Shaman.  Him see in dark all same owl.  Him know you white man.”

The Boy stared after him.  The bent figure of the Shaman looked like a huge bat flying low, hovering, disappearing into the night.

“Those your dogs howling?” the visitor asked, thinking that for sheer dismalness Pymeut would be hard to beat.

Nicholas stopped suddenly and dropped down; the ground seemed to open and swallow him.  The Boy stooped and saw his friend’s feet disappearing in a hole.  He seized one of them.  “Hold on; wait for me!”

Nicholas kicked, but to no purpose; he could make only such progress as his guest permitted.

Presently a gleam.  Nicholas had thrust away the flap at the tunnel’s end, and they stood in the house of the Chief of the Pymeuts, that native of whom Father Wills had said, “He is the richest and most intelligent man of his tribe.”

The single room seemed very small after the spaciousness of the Kachime, but it was the biggest ighloo in the settlement.

A fire burnt brightly in the middle of the earthen floor, and over it was bending Princess Muckluck, cooking the evening meal.  She nodded, and her white teeth shone in the blaze.  Over in the corner, wrapped in skins, lay a man on the floor groaning faintly.  The salmon, toasting on sticks over wood coals, smelt very appetising.

“Why, your fish are whole.  Don’t you clean ’em first?” asked the visitor, surprised out of his manners.

“No,” said Nicholas; “him better no cut.”

They sat down by the fire, and the Princess waited on them.  The Boy discovered that it was perfectly true.  Yukon salmon broiled in their skins over a birch fire are the finest eating in the world, and any “other way” involves a loss of flavour.

He was introduced for the first time to the delights of reindeer “back-fat,” and found even that not so bad.

“You are lucky, Nicholas, to have a sister—­such a nice one, too”—­(the Princess giggled)—­“to keep house for you.”

Nicholas understood, at least, that politeness was being offered, and he grinned.

“I’ve got a sister myself.  I’ll show you her picture some day.  I care about her a lot.  I’ve come up here to make a pile so that we can buy back our old place in Florida.”