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 Kotuko 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 . Now , as the Inuit say , when the ice once wakes after its long winter sleep , there is no knowing what may happen , for solid floe-ice changes shape almost as quickly as a cloud . The gale was evidently a spring gale sent out of time , and anything was possible . Yet the two were happier in their minds than before . If the floe broke up there would be no more waiting and suffering .
Spirits , goblins , and witch-people were moving about on the racking ice , and they might find themselves stepping into XXXXX 's country side by side with all sorts of wild Things , the flush of excitement still on them .
Baffin Island Sedna Sound days ground-ice grunts land-ice southerly tornaq