A FACE IN THE NIGHT
When Johnny left the igloo of the native girl he made his way directly
up the hill for a distance of a hundred yards. Then, turning, he took
three steps to the right and found himself facing the entrance to a
second stone igloo. That it was an old one and somewhat out of repair
was testified to by the fact that light came streaming through many a
crevice between the stones.
Keeping well away from the entrance, Johnny took his place near one of
these crevices. What he saw as he peered within would have made John
Barleycorn turn green with envy. A moonshine still was in full
operation. Beneath a great sheet iron vat a slow fire of driftwood
burned. Extending from the vat was the barrel of a discarded rifle. This
rifle barrel passed through a keg of ice. Beneath the outer end of the
rifle barrel was a large copper-hooped keg which was nearly full of some
transparent liquid. The liquid was still slowly dripping from the end of
the rifle barrel.
That the liquid was at least seventy-five per cent alcohol Johnny knew
right well. That it would soon cease to drip, he also knew; the fire was
burning low and no more driftwood was to be seen.
Johnny sized up the situation carefully. Aside from some crude benches
running round its walls and a cruder table which held the moonshine
still, the room was devoid of furnishings. Ranged round the wall, with
the benches for seats, were some thirty men and perhaps half as many
hard-faced native women. On every face was an expression of gloating
expectancy.
Now and again, a hand holding a small wooden cup would steal out toward
the keg to be instantly knocked aside by a husky young fellow whose duty
it appeared to be to guard the hooch.
Johnny tried to imagine what the result would be were he suddenly to
enter the place. He would not risk that. He would wait. He counted the
moments as the sound of the dripping liquid grew fainter and fainter. At
last there came a loud:
"Dez-ra" (enough), from an old man in the corner.
Instantly the tank was lifted to one side, the fire beaten out, the keg
of ice flung outside and the keg of hooch set on the table in the center
of the room.
Everybody now bent eagerly forward as if for a spring. Every hand held a
cup. But at this instant there came the shuffle of footsteps outside.
Instantly every cup disappeared. The kettle was lifted to a dark corner.
The room was silent when Johnny stepped inside.
"Hello," he shouted.
"Hello! Hello!" came from every corner.
"Where you come from?" asked the former tender of the still.
"East Cape."
"Where you go?"
"Cape Prince of Wales."
"Puck-mum-ie?" (Now?) The man betrayed his anxiety.
"Canak-ti-ma-na" (I don't know), said Johnny seating himself on the
table and allowing his glance to sweep the place from corner to corner.
"I don't know," he repeated, slowly. "How are you all anyway?"
"Ti-ma-na" (Not so bad), answered the spokesman.
Johnny was enjoying himself. He was exactly in the position of some good
motherly soul who held a pumpkin pie before the eyes of several hungry
boys. The only difference was that the pie Johnny was thinking of was
raw, so exceeding raw that it would turn these natives into wild men. So
Johnny decided that, like as not, he wouldn't let them have it at all.
Johnny enjoyed the situation nevertheless. He was mighty unpopular at
that moment, he knew, but his unpopularity now was nothing to what it
would be in a very short time. Thinking of this, he measured the
distance to the door very carefully with his eye.
At last, when it became evident that if he didn't move someone else
would, he turned to the still manager and said:
"Well, guess I'll be going. Got a match?"
He produced the borrowed cigaret. A sigh of hope escaped from the group
of natives and a match was thrust upon him.
"Thanks."
The match was of the sulphur kind, the sort that never blow out.
Nonchalantly Johnny lighted the cigaret, then, all too carelessly, he
flipped the match. Though it seemed a careless act, it was deftly done.
There came a sudden cry of alarm. But too late; the match dropped
squarely into the keg of alcohol. The next instant the place was all
alight with the blaze of the liquor, which flamed up like oil.
"This way out," exclaimed Johnny leading the procession for the door.
Lightly he bounded down the hill. He caught one glimpse of the young
woman as he passed, but this was no time for lingering farewells. The
owner of the still was on his trail.
Dodging this way and that, sliding over a wide expanse of ice, Johnny at
last eluded his pursuers in the wildly tumbled ice piles of the sea. As
he paused to catch his breath he heard the soft pat-pat of a footstep
and glancing up, caught a face peering at him round an ice pile.
"The Russian," he exclaimed.
* * * * *
When the Jap girl awoke after several hours of delicious sleep in her
ice palace bedroom, she looked upon a world unknown. The sun was shining
brightly. The air was clear. In a general way she knew the outline of
East Cape and the Diomede Islands. She knew, too, where they should be
located. It took her some time to discover them and when she did it was
with a gasp of astonishment. They were behind her.
Realizing at once what had happened, she stood up and held her face to
the air. The wind was off shore. There was not the least bit of use in
trying to make the land. A stretch of black waters yawned between shore
and ice floe by now.
Shrugging her shoulders, she climbed a pile of ice for a better view,
then hurrying down again, she picked up the harpoon and began puzzling
over it. She coiled and uncoiled the skin rope attached to it. She
worked the rope up and down through the many buttons which held it to
the shaft. She examined the sharp steel point of the shaft which was
fastened to the skin rope.
After that she sat down to think. Over to the left of her she had seen
something that lay near a pool of water. She had never hunted anything,
did not fancy she'd like it, but she was hungry.
There was a level pan of ice by the pool. The creature lay on the ice
pan. Suddenly she sprang up and made her way across the ice piles to the
edge of that broad pan. The brown creature, a seal, still some distance
away, did not move.
Searching the ice piles she at last found a regularly formed cake some
eight inches thick and two feet square. With some difficulty she pried
this out and stood it on edge. The edge was uneven, the cake tippy.
Rolling it on its side she chipped it smooth with the point of the
harpoon.
The second trial found the cake standing erect and solid. Gripping her
harpoon, she threw herself flat on her stomach and pushing the cake
before her, began to wriggle her way toward the sleeping seal.
Once she paused long enough to bore a peep hole through the cake with
her dagger. From time to time the seal wakened, and raised his head to
look about. Then he sank down again. Now she was but three rods away,
now two, now one. Now she was within ten feet of the still motionless
quarry.
Stretching every muscle for a spring like a cat, she suddenly darted
forward. At the next instant she hurled the harpoon deep into the seal's
side. She had him! Through her body pulsated thrills of wild triumph
which harkened back to the days of her primitive ancestry. Then for a
second she wavered. She was a woman. But she was hungry. Tomorrow she
might be starving.
Her knife flashed. A stream of red began dyeing the ice. A moment later,
the creature's muscles relaxed.
The Japanese girl, Cio-Cio-San, sat up and began to think. Here was
food, but how was it to be prepared? To think of eating raw seal meat
was revolting, yet here on the floe there was neither stove nor fuel.
Slowly and carefully she stripped the skin from the carcass. Beneath
this she found a two-inch layer of blubber, which must be more than
ninety per cent oil. Under this was a compact mass of dark meat. This
would be good if it was cooked. She sat down to think again. The fat
seemed to offer a solution. It would burn if she had matches. She felt
over the parka for pockets, and, with a little cry of joy, she found in
one several matches wrapped in a bit of oiled seal skin. Every native
carried them.
Hastily she stripped off a bit of fat and having lighted it, watched it
flare up and burn rapidly. She laughed and clapped her hands.
But before she could cut off a bit of meat to roast over its flames, the
soft ice began melting beneath it and the flames flickered out with a
snapping flutter.
This would not do. There must be some other way found. Rising, she drove
her harpoon into the snow at the crest of an ice pile. To this she
fastened her deer skin, that it might act as a beacon to guide her back
to her food supply. Then she turned about the ice pile and began
wandering in search of she hardly knew what.
She at last came upon some old ice, with cakes ground round and
discolored with age and then with a little cry of joy she started
forward. The thing she saw had been discarded as worthless long ago;
some gasoline schooner's crew had thrown it overboard. It was an empty
five-gallon can which had once held gasoline. It was red with rust, but
she pounced upon it and hurried away.
Once safely back at her lodge she used the harpoon to cut out a door in
the upper end of the can. After cutting several holes in one side, she
placed it on the ice with the perforated side up and put a strip of
blubber within. This she lighted. It gave forth a smoky fire, with
little heat, but much oil collected in the can. Seeing this, she began
fraying out the silk ribbon of her pajamas. When she had secured a
sufficient amount of fine fuzz she dropped it along the edge of the oil
which saturated it at once. She lighted this, which had formed itself
into a sort of wick, and at once she had a clear and steady flame.
She had solved the problem. In her seal oil oven, meat toasted
beautifully. In half an hour she was enjoying a bountiful repast. After
the feast, she sat down to think. She was fed for the moment and
apparently safe enough, but where was she and whither was she being
carried by this drifting ice floe?
* * * * *
For a second, after seeing the face of the Russian on the ice, Johnny
Thompson stood motionless. Then he turned and ran, ran madly out among
the ice piles. Heedless of direction he ran until he was out of breath
and exhausted, until he had lost himself and the Russian completely.
No, Johnny was not running from the Russian. He was running from
himself. When he saw the Russian's face, lit up as it was by the flare
of the flames that had burst forth from that abandoned igloo, there had
been something so crafty, so cruel, so remorselessly terrible about it
that he had been seized with a mad desire to kill the man where he
stood.
But Johnny felt, rather than knew, that there were very special reasons
why the Russian must not be killed, at least not at that particular
moment. Perhaps some dark secret was locked in his crafty brain, a
secret which the world should know and which would die if he died.
Johnny could only guess this, but whatever might be the reason he must
not at this moment kill the man whom he suspected of twice attempting
his life. So he fled.
By the last flickering flames of the grand spree that had burned, Johnny
figured out his approximate location and began once more his three miles
east, one mile south journey to Cape Prince of Wales. Some hours later,
having landed safely at the Cape, and having displayed the postmarked
one dollar bill to the post mistress and given it to her in exchange for
a sumptuous meal of reindeer meat, hot biscuits and doughnuts, he
started sleeping the clock round in a room that had been arranged for
the benefit of weary travelers.