Late in December, in the very middle of the three months’ night, an unlooked-for disaster came upon the village. It smote the people not directly, but a coward’s blow from ambush; it took the form of a deadly contagion among the dog teams.
How it began no one exactly knew. Some of the natives said that a stray malemiut—perhaps a ghost-dog of Quiquern’s breed—had brought it from a distant tribe. Certainly there had been some sort of visitation, because even the white people had heard their teams growling and clamoring in the still, cold dark; and an Eskimo who happened to have been up told of a wolf-like form that had skulked through the village, snapped once at Ugruk’s great gray leader, howled madly at the moon, and skulked away.
The big leader declined and died. The sickness moved thro
