To tell the truth , Kotuko was very nearly crazy for the time being ; but the girl was sure that he was being guided by his guardian spirit , and that everything would come right . She was not surprised , therefore , when at the end of the fourth march Kotuko , whose eyes were burning like fire-balls in his head , told her that his tornaq was following them across the snow in the shape of a two-headed dog . The girl looked where Kotuko pointed , and something seemed to slip into a ravine . It was certainly not human , but everybody knew that the tornait preferred to appear in the shape of bear and seal , and such like . It might have been the Ten-legged White Spirit-Bear himself , or it might have been anything , for Kotuko and the girl were so starved that their eyes were untrustworthy . They had trapped nothing , and seen no trace of game since they had left the village ; their food would not hold out for another week , and there was a gale coming . A Polar storm can blow for ten days without a break , and all that while it is certain death to be abroad . Kotuko laid up a snow-house large enough to take in the hand-sleigh -LRB- never be separated from your meat -RRB- , and while he was shaping the last irregular block of ice that makes the key-stone of the roof , he saw a Thing looking at him from a little cliff of ice half a mile away . The air was hazy , and the Thing seemed to be forty feet long and ten feet high , with twenty feet of tail and a shape that quivered all along the outlines . The girl saw it too , but instead of crying aloud with terror , said quietly , `` That is Quiquern . What comes after ? '' `` He will speak to me , '' said Kotuko ; but the snow-knife trembled in his hand as he spoke , because however much a man may believe that he is a friend of strange and ugly spirits , he seldom likes to be taken quite at his word . Quiquern , too , is the phantom of a gigantic toothless dog without any hair , who is supposed to live in the far North , and to wander about the country just before things are going to happen . They may be pleasant or unpleasant things , but not even the sorcerers care to speak about Quiquern . He makes the dogs go mad . Like the Spirit-Bear , he has several extra pairs of legs , -- six or eight , -- and this Thing jumping up and down in the haze had more legs than any real dog needed . Kotuko and the girl huddled into their hut quickly . Of course if Quiquern had wanted them , he could have torn it to pieces above their heads , but the sense of a foot-thick snow-wall between themselves and the wicked dark was great comfort . The gale broke with a shriek of wind like the shriek of a train , and for three days and three nights it held , never varying one point , and never lulling even for a minute . They fed the stone lamp between their knees , and nibbled at the half-warm seal-meat , and watched the black soot gather on the roof for seventy-two long hours .
The girl counted up the food in the sleigh ; there was not more than two days ' supply , and XXXXX looked over the iron heads and the deer-sinew fastenings of his harpoon and his seal-lance and his bird-dart .
Kotuko North Quiquern hours minute nights seal-meat snow-wall storm week