  At the moment Dick and Sandy discovered themselves in the company of men from whom life had long since fled, they would have gladly chosen to face Mistak and his men rather than remain in the strange, canyon-like pit a second longer. But time and the real peril awaiting them, if they were discovered by Mistak, steadied their nerves. “It’s silly of us to act like a couple of babies when we see two dead men,” Dick found his tongue again. “Maybe it is,” Sandy rejoined in a shaky voice, “but it was worse than finding a skeleton in a dark clothes closet.” Dick silently agreed with Sandy, but thought it better not to admit it aloud. Instead, he assumed a calmness he did not feel in order to disperse Sandy’s fears. “What we must do now,” said Dick, “is try to find out who these men were. They may have been of some importance in the south—engineers, explorers, or scientists.” “Go ahead if you want to,” Sandy shook his head as he eyed their gruesome find. “I’ll go back into the cave where I can hear any one that may come in on the other side of the barricade.” Left alone with the dead men, Dick set immediately about what he thought was his duty. Upon closer inspection he found that the men had not really frozen to death as he had at first supposed, but that one, or both, of them had died from injuries received from a bad fall. The body near the sledge was partially wedged under one of the runners. The sledge itself was crushed and splintered in front beyond repair. Dick gazed up at the edge of the walls forming the amphitheater, picturing in his mind what he thought had happened. This is what he imagined: Two men, sledging over an uncharted land in the teeth of a blinding blizzard. An ineffectual struggle of dog and man to avoid slipping into an abyss which they sensed. Then the crash of the sledge and bodies at the foot of the bank. One man had died immediately, crushed by the fall and the sledge. The other had lived to crawl away and lean up against the rock wall which he had never quitted. It was one of the countless tragedies of the north, one of the secrets of the mysterious disappearance of men who had braved the Arctic and never returned. Dick inspected every foot of ground near the sledge and found the remains of their dogs. But nowhere could he find any record or memoranda as to who the men were and what had been their mission. He was about to examine the ice-crusted dunnage in the wrecked sledge when Sandy came running in calling to him. “Someone’s in the cave! I believe Mistak has trailed us after all!” Dick hastily quitted his work at the sledge and ran back into the cave after Sandy. When they reached the point where they had plugged up the passage, their worst fears were realized. Someone was trying to break in, and the mumble of voices came faintly to their ears. The boys had underestimated the trail-craft of the white Eskimo and his men. “Mistak has discovered our hiding place in spite of all the pains we took to cover our tracks,” Dick spoke disappointedly. “All we can do now is keep them out by adding to this barricade. We can rebuild it faster than they can break it down, because on the other side only one can work at a time. Let’s get to work, Sandy.” All the loose boulders and fragments of ice the boys could find they brought to the barricade and piled there as fast as possible. But they soon found that their enemies were gaining on them. This was not noticeable until the boys had used up all the boulders near them and were required to run all the way to the amphitheater for more material. Also, as Mistak’s men worked their way further in, the cave became larger and the outlaws could work more freely. Added to this, Dick’s and Sandy’s job of filling the passage became bigger and bigger the further back they retreated. “We’ll never keep them out!” Sandy panted at last. “I guess this is our last adventure, Dick.” “Don’t give up yet, Sandy,” Dick strove to encourage his chum. Grimly, they stuck to the losing fight, determined not to give up until they had carried the last available stone into the passage to impede the progress of Fred Mistak, whose voice they could now plainly hear urging his men on to greater efforts. Like rats excavated by a clawing dog, Dick and Sandy were determined to sell their lives dearly. Yet, Providence intervened. Suddenly, the work of Mistak’s men ceased, and the echo of running feet sounded in the icy corridor, accompanied by hoarse shouts of anger and dismay. “What’s happened?” Sandy turned to Dick, hardly able to believe the good fortune that seemed to be coming to them. Dick did not answer, but stood very still, listening intently. Finally, the last sounds of retreating footsteps died away. “We’ll wait a little longer, then open up the passage and find out what or who frightened Mistak away,” said Dick. For what seemed to the boys about a quarter of an hour, they waited in the dark passage. At the end of this time they began cautiously removing the boulders that blocked the passage. A few minutes later they crawled one at a time from the tiny entrance, finding the vicinity deserted. “Funny,” Dick looked about puzzledly. “What do you suppose frightened them away?” Sandy was as much at loss as his chum to account for Mistak’s departure, but presently a distant hail electrified them with attention, and the mystery of their rescue was solved. About three hundred yards across the snow appeared a dog team and two men, the identity of whom the boys were not long in correctly guessing. “Hurrah! The police! The police!” shouted Dick, leaping down the rocky slope joyously, Sandy close on his heels. It was not long before Dick and Sandy were eagerly gripping the huge, mittened hands of Corporal McCarthy and Constable Sloan. The story of their adventures since the officers had left the base, bubbled from their lips by fits and starts, the policemen hardly succeeding in getting a word in edgewise. “Mistak pulled up stakes and mushed on when we made it too hot for him on the glacier,” Corporal McCarthy finally managed to explain. “We picked up his trail again three days ago and have been traveling fast ever since.” “Well, his camp can’t be more than five miles from here,” Dick hastened to say. “But Mistak won’t stay there now, Corporal. He’s a mighty clever criminal, and now he knows you’re this close he’ll work a trick to get you off the trail.” “Well, we can’t let him get away if there’s half a chance nabbing him,” Corporal McCarthy replied determinedly. “But Sloan and I need a few hours’ rest, and we might as well look over those bodies you boys say you found.” The dogs were unharnessed outside the cavern entrance, and left in charge of Constable Sloan, while Corporal McCarthy crawled into the cave after Dick and Sandy. The officer was as amazed as the boys had been when he first laid eyes upon the frozen figures. His opinion was that of Dick—that the men had slid or stepped over the precipitous wall of the amphitheater while blinded by a snow storm. Though the policeman searched fully an hour for something by which to identify the bodies, he had no luck, and at last gave up after making a brief entry in a small notebook he carried. “The best we can do is give them an Eskimo burial,” the Corporal concluded his inspection. “If you fellows will help me gather a few stones we’ll soon have the sad business over with.” A few minutes later, as gently as possible, they deposited the bodies in their last resting place, and built over each a substantial cairn of stones. From the wrecked sledge, Corporal McCarthy then tore some strips of wood, and lashing two together with leather thongs, he fashioned a cross for each. On the horizontal cross-pieces he carved this inscription: “Found Sept. 19, 1925. As soon as the crosses were planted and they had bowed their heads in silent prayer for the unknown victims of the north, they quitted the cavern and rejoined Constable Sloan. A temporary camp was made, tea boiled, and bedding spread out, and while the boys thirstily gulped the hot beverage, the policemen discussed plans for the apprehension of Fred Mistak. Among many other things the boys learned that they were upward of forty miles from the base of supplies Toma had been left alone to guard. The island upon which they thought they had landed when they left the mainland, seemed to stretch endlessly to the northeast, widening constantly until it disappeared under a solid ice cap. Fuel oil for the special camp stoves was very low, and the policemen had only about three days’ provisions left, which was largely fresh musk-ox which Constable Sloan had shot during the man hunt. Also several of the dogs had died from piblockto, a sort of madness peculiar to the polar regions. “According to what the policemen say,” Dick confided to Sandy, “we’ll have to make quick work of Mistak. With the supplies as low as they say they are, we’ll have to start for our base mighty soon or the north will do for us what it did for those two fellows at the end of the cave.” “We can’t get back any too soon to suit me,” said Sandy earnestly. The policemen rested the dogs and themselves for nearly two hours, when they harnessed up and once more set out upon the trail of Fred Mistak. Half a mile from the white Eskimo’s rendezvous the snowshoe tracks led on steadily, then there were signs of a delay in the trampled snow. One man had gone on from there, obviously to warn whoever had been left at the igloos of the proximity of the police. Beside the undeviating snowshoe prints leading toward Mistak’s igloos, there was a bewildering maze of tracks leading in all directions. “They’ve scattered out, every man for himself,” was Constable Sloan’s opinion. “But if we hurry on to the camp we might catch a few of them.” Corporal McCarthy thought this good counsel, and they set out immediately for the encampment from which Dick and Sandy had so recently escaped. But they found the igloos deserted, their round, white domes crushed and destroyed. Constable Sloan explained to the boys that the igloos had been broken down by the superstitious Eskimos in Mistak’s band, who believed that if they left the igloos intact, evil spirits would come and live in them. The policemen were considerably disappointed to find that Mistak’s band had once more given them the slip. The scattering of the band had made it impossible to tell just which trail was Mistak’s, and there was nothing more to do but return to the base of operations for more dogs and supplies. After a scanty meal at Mistak’s deserted camp, they set out upon the forty-mile dash to the home camp, praying for fair weather, and hoping no more of the dogs would contract the dreaded piblockto. Five days of fair weather and the half-famished company came in sight of their base to find considerable changes in evidence. In place of the three igloos they had built, there were ten of the neat snow houses. A host of dogs hung about the little village, and out at sea they could see two kayacks bobbing about, manned by as many Eskimos. “What is this!” exclaimed Corporal McCarthy. “Visitors, eh!” “I’ll bet I know how they came here!” Dick exclaimed. “I think I know, too,” Sandy added. “Well, what do you think accounts for all these uninvited guests?” asked Constable Sloan. “Sipsa brought them,” Dick replied. “Remember, I told you how he left us and that his trail led over the back trail? Well, just as Sandy and I had it figured out, he went after some of his people on account of the good seal hunting here.” Just then the appearance of Toma changed the subject, and the boys hastened forward to greet their young Indian friend. Though Toma must have been filled with great joy upon seeing Dick and Sandy safe and sound, he did not express it except with a broad grin and an added brightness in his black eyes. Shortly, proof appeared that Dick had been right in his surmise as to the reason for the coming of the Eskimos. It was in the form of Sipsa’s moon face, split by a huge smile. The guide showed himself while Toma and the policemen were unharnessing the dogs and unpacking the sledge. Constable Sloan spoke to the native, reprimanding him for deserting the boys, but Sipsa did not quite understand that his offense had been so serious. “Sipsa says the hunting was good here, and he could not resist carrying the news to his people,” Constable Sloan interpreted. “He adds that he had trouble in convincing them that the glacier was not haunted by bad spirits. The drivers who deserted us carried the news back to the village that the ‘white Eskimo’ had changed all of us to ice.” “It wouldn’t take an evil spirit to do that in this country,” Dick remarked to Sandy, recalling the frozen bodies they had found so recently. Having eaten their fill and had a few hours’ nap, Dick and Sandy crawled out of their igloo and commenced a detailed inspection of their native visitors. While most of the men and women were out hunting, a few old women and children had remained behind. The old women were making boots and shirts of sealskin and caribou hide, using an ivory needle and thread of caribou sinews. They did not seem to mind having Dick and Sandy watch them, and so the boys satisfied their curiosity to the utmost. At one of the igloos a woman was cleaning a fur rug or robe by an interesting method. She poured melted snow water upon the fur, and shook it in the cold air until the tiny drops of moisture clinging to the hairs froze into globules of ice. It seemed that the particles of dirt in the fur were imprisoned in the little balls of ice. When the fur seemed well covered with the ice crust, the women lay it fur-side down in clean snow and beat it for a long time. This done, she hung up the robe and beat the fur side, the ice particles flying to right and left. When the last of the ice balls had disappeared from the fur, the robe seemed as dry and glossy as if it still was on the animal that first had borne it. The boys were called away from the Eskimos by Corporal McCarthy who wished them to explain to him again just what they had heard regarding Corporal Thalman, the lost officer, while they were prisoners at Mistak’s rendezvous. |
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