Her knees gave way beneath her, her wrists jerked as she let herself down from ledge to jut and from jut to cranny of that _cheminée_ of death; her eyes were set in her head and her jaws cramped with a tongue-drying ague of fear of falling. In a word she was as nearly forespent as a girl of sixteen may be, and has a right to be, who has run as she had run, fought as she had fought, and fasted as she had fasted, and was still fasting.
At last (after what agonies of apprehension and endurance) the tension upon her fingers might be relaxed, for one foot was upon the first loose stone of the scree. Its fellow found something soft and chilly beneath it. At the touch of a dead enemy the Master-Girl's eyes were enlightened as if with food.
The rites of victory must be observed. She fell to, panting thickly as she cut and tugged, not for the horror of her task but from sheer exhaustion, and whilst arising to her feet to utter the three whoops which the occasion demanded,[4] found her legs bending, and dropped asleep upon the stones between her silent foes. So have men fallen asleep upon the rack when the screws were eased.
But the Porter-Soul which seldom sleeps would allow her no long respite. Much remained to do, and was she not still in peril? Before long she suddenly threw the gathering snow off her and glanced around keenly. The night-wind blowing up the crevice was tainted with--what? Four green, shining eyes were watching her. She sniffed, "Fox!" and contemptuously threw a stone and, ere its rattle had ceased, felt her scalp crawl, for over the spruce spires travelled the drear, anti-human menace of the wolf.
Her Totem was obscured and for once seemed far, but there was another resource near at hand and familiar, if only--only--it were propitious! those malignant Boy-Ghosts whose jibbering squeaks and rustlings had added untold horrors to the last hour of her darkling vigil upon the ledge. These, for some cause, had spared her, might she not entreat their continued good-will? She had known and played with all three before her promotion to the tribal governess-ship: there was nothing between herself and the elder two; the eaten child did not count. Doubtless they would be hungry--(Oh, how her own vitals pinched!) Quick, then, an offering! Savagely, desperately she hacked the hands from Low-Mah, and (it had been impossible before her sleep) bestowed them upon a ledge some five bows'-lengths up that dark ascent.