THE FACE IN THE ICE WINDOW
It was four o’clock next morning when Constable McCarthy ordered the
tents struck, the sledges packed and the dogs harnessed. The wind,
during the sunlit night, had covered up all the tracks made by the men
who had freed the Eskimo captive, and little time was spent trying to
trace them.
“Only Eskimos could have done anything in that blizzard,” Dick remarked
to Sandy, while he tightened sledge lashing.
Sandy did not reply, for at the moment Constable McCarthy gave orders to
mush on, and across the icy drifts the dogs scampered northward.
All day the dog team labored on, stopped only now and then to breathe.
Dick and Sandy were thankful for these short halts, for hardy as they
were, the slippery going was exhausting. Toma was not troubled, however.
The young Indian probably could have out-traveled even the veteran
northman, Jim Sloan, who had once trekked the ice floes of the frozen
Polar Sea, six hundred miles from the north pole.
Toward evening the deep blue of the open sea could be seen far ahead,
marking the fiord or bay that was their destination. Sloan did a lot of
reconnoitering from various high hills, but they had reached the ragged
coastline before the Eskimo village was sighted.
Constable Sloan, who was to act as interpreter, advised them to make a
halt while he went forward alone and talked with the heads of the
families.
Dick and Sandy watched the big policeman make off toward the strange
dwellings upon the shore of the fiord.
“Those snow houses must be igloos,” said Dick, pointing. “How queer they
are—just the shape of bee-hives, with the little round holes at the
bottom, too.”
“I wonder where the people are,” Sandy spoke up, “and what is that queer
smell that seems to come from the igloos?”
Dick could not answer the question. Corporal McCarthy laughed. “You’ll
smell worse smells than that before we get away from these Eskimos,”
said the officer. “But what you smell just now is probably fresh walrus
meat, or seal blubber. The natives have been hunting all day, I suppose,
and are almost all asleep now inside their houses.”
A moment after Constable Sloan had stopped before one of the igloos, a
figure crawled out of the tiny entrance. There seemed no sign whatever
of hostility in the greetings exchanged by the policeman and the native.
“That fellow doesn’t seem to have the spear-throwing habit,” observed
Sandy.
“No, as a rule the Eskimos are a peaceful people,” said Corporal
McCarthy.
Constable Sloan, at this moment, turned and signalled them to come on,
and when they reached the igloos, several other Eskimos had come out of
their houses to satisfy their native curiosity. There were women and
children among them.
“Why, the older men and women look almost alike!” exclaimed Sandy.
“I’ve heard there’s little difference in the appearance of Eskimo men
and women,” Dick replied, “but they say you can tell by the sizes of
their hoods—the women have extra big ones so they can carry their babies
in them during mild weather.”
“Well, boys,” Constable Sloan turned to Dick and Sandy, “I guess we can
camp here for the night anyway. Sipsa, the man I’ve been talking to,
gives us a hearty welcome, especially after I told him we had some
shiny, new knives and hatchets in our packs.”
“What I’d like to do first is look around inside one of those snow
houses,” said Dick. “Do you suppose Sandy and I might go into one?”
“I think I can fix that alright,” agreed Constable Sloan, and turned to
Sipsa. Followed a few words in the Eskimo tongue. Sipsa seemed delighted
at the opportunity to show the boys the inside of his strange home, and
soon Dick and Sandy were on their hands and knees, crawling through the
door of a most unusual residence.
They found the interior of the igloo to be much larger than it appeared
from an outside estimation, due to the fact that it was cut down several
feet into a solid snowdrift. A small, soapstone lamp, shaped like a clam
shell, was burning, having a wick of moss which absorbed the seal oil
fuel. The boys were surprised at the amount of heat the lamp radiated.
The furniture consisted of a long bench-like lounge, covered with
caribou and musk-ox hides. Here and there lay harpoons, knives,
whalebone dishes and spoons, and crude implements, the use of which the
boys did not know. There were two windows with panes made of opaque ice.
The atmosphere was heavy with the strong smell of fresh blubber, and
Dick and Sandy did not care to remain inside very long.
“Phew!” snorted Dick, as he reached the open air. “I couldn’t stand to
live in a smell like that.”
“Nor I,” agreed Sandy, “but just the same I think one of those snow
houses would be just the thing for us to live in while in this cold
country. The camp stoves would make plenty of heat, and we ought to be
cozy as anything in an igloo that was minus that awful stink.”
“Unless a skunk happened to slip into bed with us,” added Dick drolly.
“Like to see the skunk that was fool enough to migrate north of the
Arctic Circle,” laughed Sandy.
“Well, I haven’t seen any that cared for icicles on their whiskers,”
admitted Dick, still grinning.
“I don’t like to change such a sweet smelling subject,” Sandy rejoined,
“but what do you say we start building ourselves one of those igloos
before bedtime? I’ll go ask Corporal McCarthy for help.”
The Corporal thought the idea a practical one, and had Constable Sloan
show them how it was done.
At some distance from the Eskimo igloos, a huge, solid snowdrift was
located. A number of blocks were cut out of this, leaving a hollow hole,
perfectly round. The blocks that had been removed were then shaped and
fitted with knives and built up over the cavity in the drift,
formulating part of the walls and the roof. Spaces were left for a small
entrance and for two windows, whose panes were formed by pouring melted
snow water over the open spaces. In the intensely cold temperature the
water froze as it dripped, the icicles finally joining to make an opaque
windowpane, crude but serviceable.
It was time to retire when Dick and Sandy finally moved into the igloo,
and, crawling into their warm sleeping bags, prepared to pass their
first night under the roof of one of the finest residences known to the
people of the great polar ice cap.
But sleep was slow in coming to them in their unusual surroundings, and
presently they crawled out again and, to put in the time, tried broiling
musk-ox and walrus steaks over the oil heater. The musk-ox was quite
tasty, if a bit strong from improper handling, but they scarcely could
stomach the bitter, greasy walrus meat. Had the boys known what was in
store for them—that some day soon they would think walrus almost as
delicious as roast chicken, they might not have looked upon their future
adventures in the polar region with such eagerness. But, as the saying
goes, “What they did not know did not hurt them.”
The two policemen, together with Toma, whose leg wound was troubling him
only a little, came in to inspect the finished igloo before they again
rolled into their sleeping bags and one and all pronounced it an ideal
abode for cold weather. Before the visitors went out again, they vowed
that the next time they camped for any length of time they should live
Eskimo style.
Dick asked several pointed questions regarding what the policemen
intended doing now that they had reached the northern coast, but both
the Corporal and the Constable were evasive. Dick was not the sort of
lad who became meddlesome or troublesomely inquisitive, so he went no
further. When Sandy and he were again alone, they discussed the approach
of the polar winter, wondering how they would weather it and admiring
that heroic explorer of the past who had gone so far as to reach the
north pole, making the name of Robert Peary famous for all time.
A little later, when they had turned out their stove, preparatory to
crawling into their sleeping bags, they became aware how difficult it
was to sleep with the yellow radiance of the sun still pervading the
inside of the igloo. The windows were not clear enough for the light to
be bright, but, nevertheless, the absence of darkness made them so
restless, they decided to get up and go outside.
They found the sun hanging low over the horizon, a pale ball of yellow,
pouring its rays over the bleak and desolate northland.
“How strange it seems!” cried Dick. “Just think—at Fort Good Faith it’s
nice and dark and maybe the moon is up. I wonder what the folks at home
would say if they knew we were at this very minute seeing the midnight
sun.”
“It hardly seems possible we’re a thousand miles farther north than
we’ve ever been,” Sandy spoke awedly.
But tired muscles and the intense cold soon made their eyes heavy, and
in spite of the sun they went back to their sleeping bags.
Dick could not sleep, however. The sunlight, the excessive amount of
black tea he had drunk, and the exhaustive efforts of the day combined
to keep him awake. He tossed in his warm bag wishing he had the ability
to sleep as soundly and quickly as Sandy, whose snores he could plainly
hear.
The oil stove had warmed the igloo quite thoroughly—enough so that Dick
felt slightly uncomfortable, though it was more than forty below zero
outside. He wriggled restlessly and looked out of his sleeping bag,
gazing up at the white dome of the igloo ceiling. He was about ready to
turn over and try harder to sleep, when he thought he heard something
brush against the igloo roof at a level with the snow outside. At first
he believed it was only a prowling dog, and was determined to ignore it,
when there came plainly to his ears the crunch of a footfall in the
snow.
One of the ice windows was directly over the spot where Sandy was
sleeping, and toward this Dick’s attention was suddenly attracted as
through a sixth sense. A shadow had loomed up in the tiny square—the
shadow of a face peering in!
Dick sat up with a start and grasped his rifle. Evidently, whoever was
looking in could see nothing, since it was darker inside the igloo than
outside. Taking advantage of the prowler’s inability to see, Dick picked
up his rifle and pushed back the huge cake of snow which plugged up the
small round door. Softly, then, he stole outside and commenced the crawl
around the igloo toward the window through which he had seen the face.
Yet he must have made more noise than he thought, for at the moment he
reached a point from which he could see the spying person, there sounded
a guttural outcry, and the crunch of running feet across the snow.
“Halt!” cried Dick, leaping up and firing his rifle into the air.
But the fleeing culprit had a good start and he proved not slow on his
feet. Dick watched the dark form vanish in the dim sunlight, while the
aroused camp scrambled out to see what was wrong.
Corporal McCarthy listened intently to Dick’s story of what had
happened. The officer said little at the time, but presently he entered
the boys’ igloo, calling in the Constable and Toma.
When they all were comfortably seated, Corporal McCarthy addressed the
boys:
“What has just happened, on top of the capture we made yesterday, makes
me feel as if I ought to explain the real motive of this long trip. Your
Uncle Walter McClaren wanted me to keep you fellows out of trouble,
provided there was no real need of your services, but now that we seem
to be right in the territory of the fellow we are after, it looks like
I’ll have to enlist you in the service of the mounted.”
Dick and Sandy exchanged glances and became all ears, as the Corporal
went on:
“Corporal Thalman, an officer sent out ahead of us, has been either
killed or lost somewhere in this region, while trailing a half-breed
Eskimo murderer, called Fred Mistak. Sloan and I are after Corporal
Thalman, or what’s left of him, and of course we intend to get Mistak.”
“What did I tell you?” Dick whispered aside to Sandy.
“We will probably be up here for several months,” continued the
Corporal, “and about all I’ll expect of you fellows is to keep your eyes
open for a white Eskimo. Just a hunch of mine, and while you’re doing
that, Sloan and I will look around for traces of Thalman. We’ll all have
to hunt, more or less, in the meantime, because we haven’t enough meat
in our supplies to last. Ought to be plenty of musk-ox further inland.
For the present we’ll make this Eskimo village our headquarters. I guess
that’s about all.”
“We understand,” said Dick, and Sandy nodded importantly. Toma’s
inscrutable face did not express the excitement he must have shared with
his two young white friends.
When the policemen departed a few moments later, they left behind them
two sleepless boys, who could scarcely wait for the real beginning of
the man hunt.