Kotuko followed her example , and the two kneeled , staring into each other 's eyes , and listening with every nerve . He ripped a thin sliver of whalebone from the rim of a bird-snare that lay on the sleigh , and , after straightening , set it upright in a little hole in the ice , firming it down with his mitten . It was almost as delicately adjusted as a compass-needle , and now instead of listening they watched . The thin rod quivered a little -- the least little jar in the world ; then it vibrated steadily for a few seconds , came to rest , and vibrated again , this time nodding to another point of the compass . `` Too soon ! '' said Kotuko . `` Some big floe has broken far away outside . '' The girl pointed at the rod , and shook her head . `` It is the big breaking , '' she said . `` Listen to the ground-ice . It knocks . '' When they kneeled this time they heard the most curious muffled grunts and knockings , apparently under their feet . Sometimes it sounded as though a blind puppy were squeaking above the lamp ; then as if a stone were being ground on hard ice ; and again , like muffled blows on a drum ; but all dragged out and made small , as though they travelled through a little horn a weary distance away . `` We shall not go to Sedna lying down , '' said Kotuko . `` It is the breaking . The tornaq has cheated us . We shall die . '' All this may sound absurd enough , but the two were face to face with a very real danger . The three days ' gale had driven the deep water of Baffin 's Bay southerly , and piled it on to the edge of the far-reaching land-ice that stretches from Bylot 's Island to the west . Also , the strong current which sets east out of Lancaster Sound carried with it mile upon mile of what they call pack-ice -- rough ice that has not frozen into fields ; and this pack was bombarding the floe at the same time that the swell and heave of the storm-worked sea was weakening and undermining it .
What XXXXX and the girl had been listening to were the faint echoes of that fight thirty or forty miles away , and the little tell-tale rod quivered to the shock of it .
Baffin Island Kotuko Sedna Sound ground-ice grunts seconds southerly tornaq