"What's that noise ?" We all listened.
It was a noise not greatly unlike the faint, distant cawing and hawing of a vast flock of crows as they sometimes congregate in autumn.
"It's some sort of water-fowl _clanging_ out there about the high islands," said I.
Again it rose, borne on the wind,--"_Ta-yar-r-r! ta-yar-r-r! ta-yar-r-r!_" Had we been at home, I should have taken it for a distant mass-meeting cheering the result of the presidential election, or perhaps the presidential nomination at the convention.

It had a peculiarly barbarous, reckless sound, which was not wholly unfamiliar.
But up here in Hudson Straits we were at a loss how to account for it.
"I believe it's the Huskies," said the captain.

"Take a good look all around with your glasses." We ran our eyes over the islands.

They looked bare of any thing like an Esquimau convention.

Presently Kit uttered an exclamation.
"Why, just turn your glass off to the main, beyond the islands; right over the ice-field; on that lofty brown headland that juts out from the main! There they are!" There they were, sure enough,--a grimy, bare-headed crowd, swinging their arms, and gesticulating wildly.