In half an hour a storm would break.

The Eskimos had foreseen that storm.

They knew that the trail taken in their flight, after they had possessed themselves of the girl, would very soon be hidden from the eyes of Bram and the keen scent of his wolves.

So they had taken the chance--the chance to make Celie their prisoner before Bram returned.
And why, Philip asked himself, did these savage little barbarians of the north want HER?
The fighting she had pictured for him had not startled him.

For a long time the Kogmollocks had been making trouble.
In the last year they had killed a dozen white men along the upper coast, including two American explorers and a missionary.