He had risen out of his
serfdom. The stinging slash of the whip and his dread of it were gone.
Standing there in the starlight with his magnificent head thrown up and
the muscles of his huge body like corded steel, the passing spirit of
Shan Tung would have taken him for Tao, the Great Dane. He was not
excited--and yet he was filled with a mighty desire--more than that, a
tremendous purpose. The yelping excitement of the oncoming Eskimo dogs no
longer urged him to turn aside to avoid their insolent bluster, as he
would have turned aside yesterday or the day before. The voices of his
old masters no longer sent him slinking out of their way, a growl in his
throat and his body sagging with humiliation and the rage of his slavery.
He stood like a rock, his broad chest facing them squarely, and when he
saw the shadows of them racing up out of the star-mist an eighth of a
mile away, it was not a growl but a whine that rose in his throat, a
whine of low and repressed eagerness, of a great yearning about to be
fulfilled. Two hundred yards--a hundred--eighty--not until the dogs were
less than fifty from him did he move. And then, like a rock hurled by a
mighty force, he was at them.
He met the onrushing weight of the pack breast to breast. There was no
warning. Neither men nor dogs had seen the waiting shadow. The crash sent
the lead-dog back with Wapi's great fangs in his throat, and in an
instant the fourteen dogs behind had piled over them, tangled in their
traces, yelping and snarling and biting, while over them round-faced,
hooded men shouted shrilly and struck with their whips, and from the
sledge a white man sprang with a rifle in his hands.
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