For a few moments it was pitch dark.

The fingers of his hand dug into the rough bark of a spruce.

He did not move.

It was then that he heard something above the caressing rustle of the wind in the spruce-tops.
It came to him faintly, from full half a mile deeper in the black forest that reached down to the bank of the Frazer.

It was the night call of an owl--one of the big gray owls that turned white as the snow in winter.
Mentally he counted the notes in the call.