CHAPTER II

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.