THE JAP GIRL IN PERIL
Hardly had Johnny made his way across the shore ice and begun his
dangerous journey when things of a startling nature began to happen to
the Jap girl.
She was seated in her igloo sewing a garment of eider duck skins, when
three rough-looking Chukches entered and, without ceremony, told her by
signs that she must accompany them.
She was conducted to the largest igloo in the village. This she found
crowded with natives, mostly men. She was led to the center of the
floor, which was vacant, the natives being ranged round the sides of the
place.
Instantly her eyes searched the frowning faces about her for a clue to
this move. She soon found it. In the throng, she recognized five of the
reindeer Chukches, members of that band which had attempted to murder
Johnny Thompson and herself.
Their presence startled her. That they would make their way this far
north, when their reindeer had been sent back by paid messengers some
days before, had certainly seemed very improbable both to Johnny and to
the girl.
Evidently the Chukches were very revengeful in spirit or very faithful
in the performance of murders they had covenanted to commit. At any
rate, here they were. And the girl did not deceive herself, this was a
council chamber. She did not doubt for a moment that her sentence would
be death. Her only question was, could there be a way of escape? The
wall was lined with dusky forms this time. The entrance was closely
guarded. Only one possibility offered; above her head, some five feet, a
strong rawhide rope crossed from pole to pole of the igloo. Directly
above this was the smoke hole. She had once entered one of these when an
igloo was drifted over with snow.
The solemn parley of the council soon began. Like a lawyer presenting
his case, the headman of the reindeer tribe stood before them all and
with many gestures told his story. At intervals in his speech two men
stepped forward for examination. The jaw of one of them was very stiff
and three of his teeth were gone. As to the other, his face was still
tied up in bandages of tanned deer skin. His jaw was said to be broken.
The Jap girl, in spite of her peril, smiled. Johnny had done his work
well.
There followed long harangues by other members of the reindeer tribe.
The last speech was made by the headman of East Cape. It was the longest
of all.
At length a native boy turned to the Jap girl and spoke to her in
English.
"They say, that one; they say all; you die. What you say?"
"I say want--a--die," she replied smiling.
This answer, when interpreted, brought forth many a grunt of surprise.
"They say, that one! they say all," the boy went on, "how you want--a
die? Shoot? Stab?"
"Shoot." She smiled again, then, "But first I do two thing. I sing. I
dance. My people alletime so."
"Ki-ke" (go ahead) came in a chorus when her words had been
interpreted.
No people are fonder of rhythmic motion and dreamy chanting than are the
natives of the far north. The keen-witted Japanese girl had learned this
by watching their native dancing. She had once visited an island in the
Pacific and had learned while there a weird song and a wild, whirling
dance.
Now, as she stood up she kicked from her feet the clumsy deer skin boots
and, from beneath her parka extracted grass slippers light as silk.
Then, standing on tip toe with arms outspread, like a bird about to fly,
she bent her supple body forward, backward and to one side. Waving her
arms up and down she chanted in a low, monotonous and dreamy tone.
All eyes were upon her. All ears were alert to every note of the chant.
Great was the Chukche who learned some new chant, introduced some
unfamiliar dance. Great would he be who remembered this song and dance
when this woman was dead.
The tones of the singer became more distinct, her voice rose and fell.
Her feet began to move, slowly at first, then rapidly and yet more
rapidly. Now she became an animated voice of stirring chant, a whirling
personification of rhythm.
And now, again, the song died away; the motion grew slower and slower,
until at last she stood before them motionless and panting.
"Ke-ke! Ke-ke!" (More! More!) they shouted, in their excitement,
forgetting that this was a dance of death.
Tearing the deer skin parka from her shoulders and standing before them
in her purple pajamas, she began again the motion and the song. Slow,
dreamy, fantastic was the dance and with it a chant as weird as the song
of the north wind. "Woo-woo-woo." It grew in volume. The motion
quickened. Her feet touched the floor as lightly as feathers. Her
swaying arms made a circle of purple about her. Then, as she spun round
and round, her whole body seemed a purple pillar of fire.
At that instant a strange thing happened. As the natives, their minds
completely absorbed by the spell of the dance, watched and listened,
they saw the purple pillar rise suddenly toward the ceiling. Nor did it
pause, but mounting straight up, with a vaulting whirl disappeared from
sight.
Overcome by the hypnotic spell of the dance, the natives sat motionless
for a moment. Then the bark of a dog outside broke the spell. With a mad
shout: "Pee-le-uk-tuk Pee-le-uk-tuk!" (Gone! Gone!) they rushed to the
entrance, trampling upon and hindering one another in their haste.
* * * * *
When Johnny reached the piling ice, on his way across the Strait, he at
first gave his entire attention to picking a pathway. Indeed this was
quite necessary, for here a great pan of ice, thirty yards square and
eight feet thick, glided upon another of the same tremendous proportions
to rear into the air and crumble down, a ponderous avalanche of ice
cakes and snow. He must leap nimbly from cake to cake. He must take
advantage of every rise and fall of the heaving swells which disturbed
the great blanket winter had cast upon the bosom of the deep.
All this Johnny knew well. Guided only by the direction taken by the
moving cakes, he made his way across this danger zone, and out upon the
great floe, which though still drifting slowly northward, did not pile
and seemed as motionless as the shore ice itself.
While at the village at East Cape Johnny had made good use of his time.
He had located accurately the position of the Diomede Islands, half way
station in the Strait. He had studied the rate of the ice's drift
northward. He now was in a position to know, approximately, how far he
might go due east and how much he must veer to the south to counteract
the drift of the ice. He soon reckoned that he would make three miles an
hour over the uneven surface of the floe. He also reckoned that the floe
was making one mile per hour due north. He must then, for every mile he
traveled going east, do one mile to the south. He did this by going a
full hour's travel east, then one-third of an hour south.
So sure was he of his directions that he did not look up until the rocky
cliffs of Big Diomede Island loomed almost directly above him.
There was a native village on this island where he hoped to find food
and rest and, perhaps, some news of the Russian and Hanada. He located
the village at last on a southern slope. This village, as he knew,
consisted of igloos of rock. Only poles protruding from the rocks told
him of its location.
As he climbed the path to the slope he was surprised to be greeted only
by women and children. They seemed particularly unkempt and dirty. At
last, at the crest of the hill, he came upon a strange picture. A young
native woman tastily dressed was standing before her house, puffing a
turkish cigaret. She was a half-breed of the Spanish type, and Johnny
could imagine that some Spanish buccaneer, pausing at this desolate
island to hide his gold, had become her father.
She asked him into an igloo and made tea for him, talking all the while
in broken English. She had learned the language, she told him, from the
whalers. She spoke cheerfully and answered his questions frankly. Yes,
his two friends had been here. They had gone, perhaps; she did not know.
Yes, he might cross to Cape Prince of Wales in safety she thought. But
Johnny had the feeling that her mind was filled with the dread of some
impending catastrophe which perhaps he might help avert.
And at last the revelation came. Lighting a fresh cigaret, she leaned
back among the deer skins and spoke. "The men of the village," she said,
"you have not asked me about them."
"Thought they were hunting," replied Johnny.
"Hunting, no!" she exclaimed. "Boiling hooch."
Johnny knew in a moment what she meant. "Hooch" was whisky, moonshine.
Many times he had heard of this vicious liquor which the Eskimos and
Chukches concocted by boiling sourdough, made of molasses, flour and
yeast.
The girl told him frankly of the many carouses that had taken place
during the winter, of the deaths that had resulted from it, of the
shooting of her only brother by a drink-crazed native.
Johnny listened in silence. That she told it all without apparent
emotion did not deceive him. Hooch was being brewed now. She wished it
destroyed. This was the last brew, for no more molasses and flour
remained in the village. This last drunken madness would be the most
terrible of all. She told him finally of the igloo where all the men had
gathered.
Johnny pondered a while in silence. He was forever taking over the
troubles of others. How could he help this girl, and save himself from
harm? What could he do anyway? One could not steal four gallons of
liquor before thirty or forty pairs of eyes.
Suddenly, an idea came to him. Begging a cigaret from the native beauty,
he lighted it and gave it three puffs. No, Johnny did not smoke. He was
merely experimenting. He wanted to see if it would make him sick. Three
puffs didn't, so having begged another "pill" and two matches he left
the room saying:
"I'll take a look."
* * * * *
When the Jap girl leaped through the smoke hole of the igloo at East
Cape she rolled like a purple ball off the roof. Jumping to her feet she
darted down the row of igloos. Pausing for a dash into an igloo, she
emerged a moment later bearing under one arm a pile of fur garments and
under the other some native hunting implements. Then she made a dash for
the shore ice.
It was at this juncture that the first Chukche emerged from the large
igloo. At his heels roared the whole gang. Like a pack of bloodthirsty
hounds, they strove each one to keep first place in the race. Their
grimy hands itched for a touch of that flying girlish figure.
Though she was a good quarter mile in the lead she was hampered by the
articles she carried. Certain young Chukches, too, were noted for their
speed. Could she make it? There was a full mile of level, sandy beach
and quite as level shore ice to be crossed before she could reach the
protection of the up-turned and tumbled ice farther out to sea.
On they came. Now their cries sounded more distinctly; they were
gaining. Now she heard the hoarse gasps of the foremost runner; now
imagining that she felt his hot breath on her cheek she redoubled her
energy. A grass slipper flew into the air. She ran on barefooted over
the stinging ice.
Now an ice pile loomed very near. With a final dash she gained its
shelter. With a whirl she darted from it to the next, then to the right,
straight ahead, again to the right, then to the left. But even then she
did not pause. She must lose herself completely in this labyrinth of
up-ended ice cakes.
Five minutes more of dodging found her far from the shouting mob, that
by this time was as hopelessly lost as dogs in a bramble patch.
The Jap girl smiled and shook her fist at the shore. She was safe.
Compared to this tangled wilderness of ice, the Catacombs of Rome were
an open street.
Throwing a fur garment on a cake of ice, she sat down upon it, at the
same time hastily drawing a parka over her perspiring shoulders. She
then proceeded to examine her collection of clothing. The examination
revealed one fawn skin parka, one under suit of eider duck skin, one
pair of seal skin trousers, two pairs of seal skin boots, with deer skin
socks to match, and one pair of deer skin mittens. Besides these there
was an undressed deer skin, a harpoon and a seal lance.
Not such a bad selection, this, for a moment's choosing. The principal
difficulty was that the whole outfit had formerly belonged to a boy of
fourteen. The Jap girl shrugged her shoulders at this and donned the
clothing without compunctions.
When that task was complete she surveyed herself in an up-ended cake of
blue ice and laughed. In this rig, with her hair closely plaited to her
head, her own mother would have taken her for a young Chukche boy out
for a hunt.
Other problems now claimed her attention. She was alone in the world
without food or shelter. She dared not return to the village. Where
should she go?
Again she shrugged her shoulders. She was warmly clad, but she was tired
and sleepy. Seeking out a cubby hole made by tumbled cakes of ice, she
plastered up the cracks between the cakes with snow until only one
opening remained. Then, dragging her deer skin after her, she crept
inside. She half closed the opening with a cake of snow, spread the deer
skin on the ice and curled up to sleep as peacefully as if she were in
her own home.
One little thing she had not reckoned with; she was now on the drifting
ice of the ocean, and was moving steadily northward at the rate of one
mile an hour.