eleven o'clock
Big Dick Blake would not have it so at first , and invited the half-breed outside to take a `` licking '' at his hands . But the others soon pacified him , the trouble was forgotten and dancing resumed as though nothing had happened to disturb it . As soon as attention was drawn from him Micmac John , unobserved , slipped out of the door and a few moments later placed some things in a canoe that had been turned over on the beach , launched it and paddled away in the ghostly light of the rising moon . The dancing continued until eleven o'clock , then the men lit their pipes , and after a short smoke and chat rolled into their blankets upon the floor , Mrs. Black and the girls retired to the bunks , and , save for a long , weird howl that now and again came from the wolf dogs outside , and the cheery crackling of the stove within , not a sound disturbed the silence of the night . As has been intimated , Douglas Campbell was a man of importance in Eskimo Bay . When a young fellow he had come here from the Orkney Islands as a servant of the Hudson 's Bay Company . A few years later he married a native girl , and then left the company 's service to become a hunter .