He did not finish.  For a moment the wind had lessened in fury, as if gathering a deeper breath.  And what he heard drew a cry from him this time, and a sharper whine from Peter.  Out of the blackness of the night had come a woman’s voice!  In that first instant of shock and amazement he would have staked his life that what he heard was not a mad outcry of the night or an illusion of his brain.  It was clear—­distinct—­a woman’s voice coming from out on the Barren, rising above the storm in an agony of appeal, and dying out quickly until it became a part of the moaning wind.  And then, with equal force, came the absurdity of it to McKay.  A woman!  He swallowed the lump that had risen in his throat, and tried to laugh.  A woman—­out in that storm—­a thousand miles from nowhere!  It was inconceivable.

The laugh which he forced from his lips was husky and unreal, and there was a smothering grip of something at his heart.  In the ghostly light of the alcohol lamp his eyes were wide open and staring.

He looked at Peter.  The dog stood stiff-legged before the hole.  His body was trembling.

“Peter!”

With a responsive wag of his tail Peter turned his bristling face up to his master.  Many times Jolly Roger had seen that unfailing warning in his comrade’s eyes.  There was some one outside—­or Peter’s brain, like his own, was twisted and fooled by the storm!

Against his reasoning—­in the face of the absurdity of it—­Jolly Roger was urged into action.  He changed the snowshoe and replaced the alcohol lamp so that the glow of light could be seen more clearly from the Barren.  Then he went to the hole and crawled through.  Peter followed him.

As if infuriated by their audacity, the storm lashed itself over the top of the dune.  They could hear the hissing whine of fine hard snow tearing above their heads like volleys of shot, and the force of the wind reached them even in their shelter, bringing with it the flinty sting of the snow-dust.  Beyond them the black barren was filled with a dismal moaning.  Looking up, and yet seeing nothing in the darkness, Peter understood where the weird shriekings and ghostly cries came from.  It was the wind whipping itself up the side and over the top of the dune.

Jolly Roger listened, hearing only the convulsive sweep of that mighty force over a thousand miles of barren.  And then came again one of those brief intervals when the storm seemed to rest for a moment, and its moaning grew less and less, until it was like the sound of giant chariot wheels receding swiftly over the face of the earth.  Then came the silence—­a few seconds of it—­while in the north gathered swiftly the whispering rumble of a still greater force.