It was Rydal. Under
the mass of dogs Wapi, the Walrus, heard nothing of the shouts of men. He
was fighting. He was fighting as he had never fought before in all the
days of his life. The fierce little Eskimo dogs had smelled him, and they
knew their enemy. The lead-dog was dead. A second Wapi had disemboweled
with a single slash of his inch-long fangs. He was buried now. But his
jaws met flesh and bone, and out of the squirming mass there rose fearful
cries of agony that mingled hideously with the bawling of men and the
snarling and yelping of beasts that had not yet felt Wapi's fangs. Three
and four at a time they were at him. He felt the wolfish slash of their
teeth in his flesh. In him the sense of pain was gone. His jaws closed on
a foreleg, and it snapped like a stick. His teeth sank like ivory knives
into the groin of a brute that had torn a hole in his side, and a
smothered death-howl rose out of the heap. A fang pierced his eye. Even
then no cry came from Wapi, the Walrus. He heaved upward with his giant
body. He found another throat, and it was then that he rose above the
pack, shaking the life from his victim as a terrier would have shaken a
rat. For the first time the Eskimos saw him, and out of their
superstitious souls strange cries found utterance as they sprang back and
shrieked out to Rydal that it was a devil and not a beast that had waited
for them in the trail.
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