Out of the village lanes far below they rushed headlong,
and sitting on the beach in a wide circle, heads all in and tails out,
they raised their noses to the distant, wolf-topped pinnacles and joined
in the wailing answer. Then the wolves would sit very still, listening
with cocked ears to the cry of their captive kinsmen, till the dismal
howling died away into silence, when they would start the clamor into
life again by giving the wolf's challenge.
Why they did it, what they felt there in the strange unreality of the
moonlight, and what hushed their profound enmity, none can tell.
Ordinarily the wolf hates both fox and dog, and kills them whenever they
cross his path; but to-night the foxes were yapping an answer all around
them, and sometimes a few adventurous dogs would scale the mountains
silently to sit on the rocks and join in the wild wolf chorus, and not a
wolf stirred to molest them. All were more or less lunatic, and knew not
what they were doing.
For hours the uncanny comedy would drag itself on into the tense
midnight silence, the wailing cry growing more demented and heartrending
as the spell of ancient days fell again upon the degenerate huskies.
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