When the leader is shot, another takes his place, and so on.
A few minutes later I stood again, as I had stood on previous expeditions, with that bunch of shaggy black forms, gleaming eyes and pointed horns before me--only this time it did not mean life or death.
[Illustration: HEAD OF BULL MUSK-OX KILLED ON PARRY PENINSULA] Yet, as I raised my rifle, again I felt clutching at my heart that terrible sensation of life hanging on the accuracy of my aim; again in my bones I felt that gnawing hunger of the past; that aching lust for red, warm, dripping meat--the feeling that the wolf has when he pulls down his quarry.

He who has ever been really hungry, either in the Arctic or elsewhere, will understand this feeling.

Sometimes the memory of it rushes over me in unexpected places.

I have felt it after a hearty dinner, in the streets of a great city, when a lean-faced beggar has held out his hand for alms.
I pulled the trigger, and the bull leader of the herd fell on his haunches.

The bullet had found the vulnerable spot under the fore shoulder, where one should always shoot a musk-ox.