In the meantime, in a camp some distance farther down the valley, beneath a cut-bank at the edge of a frozen river, his two companions were receiving a strange and startling message. The message was once more from Munson, the explorer. Again the expedition had met with disaster. Having attempted the flight to shore in their airplanes they had made but half the distance when one of the planes became disabled and landed, to crash into a pile of ice. With the remaining planes much overloaded, they had been obliged to abandon all food. Two hundred miles from shore the gasoline had given out. Making fortunate landings on broad ice-pans, they had at once started on foot for shore. They had been carried to the right by a strong gale and would doubtless reach land some twenty miles west of their food depot on Flaxman Island; that is, they would land there if anywhere. Without food they were well nigh hopeless. Still they had two light rifles and a hundred rounds of ammunition. There were seals in water-holes and polar bears wandering over the floes. There was a chance for life. If anyone listening in on this message were in a position to come out and meet them they might be the instruments in saving lives.
“That means us,” said Joe. “And it means such a struggle as we have never experienced before.”
“Means we leave the trail of the outlaw at once,” said Jennings.
“Why—uh—” Joe stammered.
“His trail will lead us twenty miles out of the way. Flaxman Island is twenty miles to the east of us; these explorers are straight ahead. We follow this stream straight to the sea. Hard-packed river trail all the way. The outlaw, unless I miss my guess, will turn off soon to cut across the hills.”
“We haven’t much food to take to them.”
“We have our dogs,” said Jennings grimly. “Men eat dogs when they are starving.”
Joe looked at his old leader, Ginger, who lay with feet stretched out before the fire. The dog rose, stretched himself, then walked over to rub his cold nose against his young master.
Joe gulped, “Y-e-s, I suppose they do.”
“We’ll unload everything we don’t need, all the radiophone equipment except the light set, and cache them here. Then we’ll make a flying trip of it. And,” he said, noting Joe’s discomfort at the thought of sacrificing his faithful four, the team that had fought with him, starved with him and carried him so far, “we’ve got rifles and ammunition. Who knows what game may bob up to take the place of our dogs?”
It was with a feeling of great astonishment that Curlie, early in the afternoon of the next short Arctic day, came upon the pile of radiophone instruments and other articles which had been piled beside the trail by his companions.
“Now what does this mean?” he said, addressing his reindeer. “Can’t be they’ve been ambushed and robbed. Things are piled away too carefully for that.”
“Hello!” he exclaimed a moment later, “they’ve left the trail of the outlaw! Of all the unbelievable things! What could have induced them to do that? Can’t be trying to outflank him. Trail they’ve taken is a lot longer than his.”
He returned to sit down on the sled and scratch his head.
“Traveling light, they are. I’d never catch them now.”
Again he was silent for some time.
“Wish they’d left me a rifle. I’d go after the outlaw single-handed. But of course they wouldn’t. Don’t even know I’m alive, let alone on their trail with a reindeer. Nothing more improbable than that. Wish I’d risked a call to them. Didn’t dare, though. Outlaw’d know we were after him if he listened in. Now what’s to be done? Have to see how much radiophone stuff they left behind.”
For some time he busied himself sorting out the parts of the heavier radiophone set and connecting them up.
“All here,” he breathed at last, “even my little outfit for making mince pie of a fellow’s speech then piecing it together again. Joe took all the smaller set, though. That’s good. Best thing I can do is to camp right here and wait until I’m sure they must be camped for the night. Then I’ll send out a signal and see if I can get them. I can talk mince meat fashion so the outlaw won’t know what it’s about, anyway. Got to get in touch with them some way or another.”
Realizing that after hearing from them he might want to travel at night to make up for lost time, after tethering out his reindeer he crept into his sleeping-bag and, in a moment, fell into a sound sleep.
When he awoke it was quite dark. Getting busy at once with his radiophone, he sent a signal quivering through the air.
He received no response.
A half hour later he sent out a second. Still no answer.
“That’s queer! Mighty queer,” he murmured. “Still, they may have made rapid time and got in ahead of the outlaw. May be close in, too close to risk an answer. No harm to keep on trying, though.”
It will be remembered that Curlie had not listened in on any of the messages sent by the exploring party. As a consequence he was totally ignorant of their plight and unable in any way to account for his companions’ sudden change of course.
“Queer business!” he told himself as he prepared to send his third signal. “Mighty queer!”
Every half hour for three hours he sent out the signal. Then, just as he was about to give it up, his receiver rattled and a succession of short, sharp, meaningless sounds began to pour forth.
“That’s Joe!” he smiled delightedly. “Nobody up here can talk that language. Now we’ll know what’s what.”
His conclusion was correct. It was Joe speaking. When Curlie had decoded the jumbled message he needed only to signal back an answering O. K. In short, concise sentences, Joe had told him all that he needed to know.
“And now,” he sat down rather dizzily on his sled, “where does that leave me? Far as I can see, it leaves me guardian of that food supply until the party gets in. It’s the best I can do. And, unless I miss my guess, it’s going to be some job! I’m to be a guard without a gun. And the fellow I’m going up against has a gun, probably two or three of them.”
After a few moments had elapsed, he spoke again: “Short day’s journey now. No use risking coming upon him in the night. Might as well take another snooze and freshen up a bit.”
At that he crept into his sleeping-bag once more, but not to sleep at once. His mind was too full of thoughts for that. The curtain to the crowded third act of this little drama of life which he had been playing was, he felt sure, about to rise. What was it to be like? What gun-play, what struggles, what battle of wits would be enacted upon that white and glistening stage with no audience save the stars?
His mind was filled with a thousand questions. Who was the outlaw? Was he the smuggler chieftain or was he not? What grudge did he hold against the great explorer that he would travel all this distance to satisfy it? Or did he hold a grudge at all? Was he merely coming here to winter in safety? Would he camp by the food depot or would he destroy it? Who was his companion? Or did he have no companion? Had it been he who had appeared in the mirage or had it not?
Who was the Whisperer? Or was there no Whisperer? If there was such a person, was that person a girl and was she with the outlaw at the present time? If he succeeded in outwitting the outlaw, would he at last meet the Whisperer face to face?
All these and many more questions seething through his brain, kept him for a long time awake. But at last weariness conquered and he fell asleep.
When, only a few hours later, he awoke, it was with a feeling of impending danger. Before he opened his eyes, he could hear the reindeer thrashing about among the willows to which he was tied in a vain attempt to break away. When he opened his eyes it was to stare up at a broad dome of sky which appeared to be all on fire.
“The food depot!” he groaned, leaping to his feet. “It was closer than I thought. It’s gone. Burned!”
“No!” he exclaimed, a second later. “No, it’s worse than that!” He put his hand to his forehead. The next instant, reeling like a drunken man in a delirious dream, he stumbled toward his reindeer.
In the meantime Joe Marion and Jennings were making their way over the treacherous ice floe toward the party of explorers who were battling for their lives against cold, hunger and ever perilous floes.
They had crossed a broad expanse of ice which, level as a floor, lay between the shore and a series of low, barren, sandy islands. Then for three miles farther they had traveled over ice which was frozen to the shore. This ice, piled as it had been by storms of early winter into fantastic heaps, here and there mixed with flat cakes and with narrow, tombstone-like fragments set on end, was nevertheless firmly united to the shore. Over this, winding back and forth on flat cakes and over tumbled piles of ice, they traveled without fear.
When they came to what lay beyond this, all was changed. They entered upon a new life with fear and trembling. True, the ice, pressed hard on shore by a north wind, was not at this moment moving, yet the slow rising and falling of a broad cake of ice here, the crumbling of a pile there, told them that they were now far out over the fathomless ocean; told them too that should the wind shift to south, east or west they might at any moment be carried out to sea, never to be heard of again.
“Can’t be helped,” Jennings said grimly, as Joe spoke of this. “When the lives of thirty of Uncle Sam’s brave citizens are at stake one does not think of personal danger. He goes straight ahead and does his duty. Our duty lies out there.” He pointed straight over the ice floes which lay far as eye could scan, out to sea.
“Right-o,” said Joe as he turned to urge his dogs forward.
It was hard on Joe, this urging of his faithful four forward over the difficult trail.
“’Twouldn’t be so bad,” he told them, “if I wasn’t driving you straight on to your own destruction. To think that after all this struggle your reward is being eaten by some starving explorers. That’s what breaks my heart.”
“Ho, well,” he sighed as he climbed a tumbled pile of ice fragments, “there may be a way out yet.”
Night came on, and still by the light of the moon they fought their way forward. Every moment counted. Their own lives as well as the lives of those they sought to rescue were at stake.
Only when the dogs, completely exhausted, lay down in the traces and howled piteously, begging for rest and food, did they pause and seek a camping place for the night.
A broad cake of ice some hundred yards wide from edge to edge was chosen. In the center of this they pitched their tent. No Arctic feathers for them that night, only the hard surface of the ice. But even such a bed as this was welcome after a day of heroic toil.
When the dogs had been fed and they had eaten their own supper they set up the radiophone, and braving the danger of being detected by the outlaw, sought to get into communication with the exploring party.
“Got to find out whether we are going right,” Joe explained.
In a surprisingly short time they received an answer and were cheered by the news that their course was correct, and that they were at this moment not more than seventy-five miles from the explorers. With good luck, did not the ice floe begin to shift, they might almost hope to meet the men they sought at the evening of the next day and to relieve them of their suffering from hunger.
After getting in touch with Curlie and rejoicing over the knowledge that he was alive and safe, they crept into their sleeping-bags and speedily drifted away to the land of dreams.
Joe was awakened some time later to hear old Major sawing at the chain which bound him to his sled and barking lustily.
Before his eyes were fully open he heard a ripping sound at the flaps of the tent. The next instant two great round balls of fire appeared at the gap made in the tent-wall.
“Jennings! Jennings!” he shouted hoarsely. “A bear! A bear!”
The polar bear, attracted by the sound of his voice, lunged forward, taking half the tent with him.
Joe had scarcely time to creep back into the depths of his sleeping bag when the bear’s foot came down with a thud exactly where his head had been a second before.
* * * * * * * *
What Curlie Carson saw as he plunged toward his reindeer there at the edge of the scrub forest was a spectacle which might well have staggered a person much older than himself.
The forest of scrub spruce was on fire. The fire was traveling toward him, seemed, indeed, to be all but upon him.
There was not a breath of air. The fire traveled by leaping from tree to tree. The very heat of it appeared to seize the dwarf trees and, uprooting them, to hurl them hundreds of feet in air.
It was such a spectacle as few are called upon to witness. A red column of flame rose a sheer hundred feet in air. Dry, rosiny spruce cones and needles rose like feathers high in air, to go rocketing away like sparks from a volcano. The sky, the very snow all about him, seemed on fire.
“And near! So near!” he muttered through parched lips as he tore at the thong which bound his terrified reindeer to the willow bush.
His thought had been to loose the reindeer, and clinging to the sled, attempt to escape.
It was fortunate that the thong resisted his efforts, for just as he was about to succeed in loosing it, he caught above the tremendous roar of the fire a strange crack-cracking. The next instant he saw a vast herd of wild and half tame things, all maddened by the fire, bearing down upon him. There was just time to flash his knife twice, to cut the thong and the sled strap, then to leap astride the white reindeer. Then the surge were upon him. Like a mighty flood they surrounded him, engulfed him, carried him forward.
He saw them as in a dream, reindeer by hundred, caribou by thousands, wolves, a bear, all struggling in a mad effort to rush down the narrow valley from the destroying pillar of fire.
He saw a wolf snap at a caribou’s heels. Saw innumerable hoofs strike the wolf and bear him down to sure destruction.
“Trampled him to death,” he shivered, “trampled him as they would me if I fell from my reindeer.”
He clung to the deer’s neck and to his harness with the grim grip of death.
“Sled’s gone, radiophone set gone. Everything gone but life and a reindeer. And thus far you are lucky.” So his mind seemed to tell him things as he felt himself floating forward as if on the backs of the innumerable host.
Just when Joe, trapped in the sleeping-bag, with the ponderous bear moving near him, was wondering what had happened to Jennings, he felt himself suddenly lifted from the ice and shaken till his teeth rattled. Then suddenly he went crashing upon the hard surface beneath him.
He guessed well enough what had happened: The bear had seized the sleeping-bag and having lifted it as a cat lifts a rat, had shaken it violently. Then the deerskin had given way beneath Joe’s weight and he had gone down with a thump.
“What next?” his agitated mind asked him. “What next?”
He could only guess at what happened next. Inside his sleeping-bag he could see nothing. But that something tremendous was happening he was forced to believe.
From the mouth of the bear there came a sudden sound like the hissing of a cat, and after that such a tumbling and thrashing as he had never heard tell of.
Over and over the bear appeared to roll. There were sounds of tearing canvas and straining ropes. Once the bear rolled across his feet and for a second he feared he would be lamed for life. Then suddenly the sound ceased. He only knew one thing, which was that something heavy rested on his sleeping-bag.
To realize what had really happened we must follow Jennings as he proceeded to meet this strange and novel situation. Being more fortunate than Joe, he had succeeded in wriggling from his sleeping-bag and in grasping his rifle before the bear saw him. He had been engaged in the business of getting a bead on the bear’s ponderous head when there came a sudden tearing at the ropes of the tent. The next instant it doubled up and came flapping down upon him.
If you are able to imagine what it might be like to be caught in a net with a whale, you have some notion of Jennings’ position at this time. The tent had enveloped both him and the bear. Together they rolled over and over. One moment it seemed he would be crushed to death and the next, as an opening appeared, a new rent in the canvas, it seemed that he might be freed.
At last, with a mighty effort, he wrenched himself loose and, much to his own astonishment, found that he still grasped his rifle in his left hand.
The bear was still thrashing about. Joe was still buried beneath the tent. Jennings was just trying to figure out the next move, when he heard one of the dogs let out a wild ki-yi-yi of fright.
Wheeling about, he saw a huge bear grasping a dog by the middle of the back with his teeth and attempting to carry him away. Since the dog was chained to a sled and six other dogs were also chained to that sled, it was necessary for him to drag the sled and six very reluctant dogs after him.
“Be funny if it wasn’t serious,” said Jennings grimly as he took steady aim at the beast’s head. Three times his automatic rifle barked. The bear crumpled up in a heap.
There was, however, not a second to be wasted. As he turned he found himself staring at a towering white apparition. This apparition, which stood some three feet above his head, had red gleaming eyes and a lolling tongue. The second bear had escaped from the tent. Angered by his experience and the death of his companion, he was ready for battle with these strange invaders of his domain.
“Want satisfaction, do you?” said Jennings grimly. “Well! There! Take it!”
With a movement that for speed and accuracy could not be beaten, he thrust the muzzle of his rifle at the base of the beast’s skull and fired.
Thus a second bear had just been bagged by Jennings when Joe came creeping out of his sleeping-bag. For a few seconds he sat rubbing his shins. Then suddenly his face lightened with a smile as he sang out:
“We killed the bear! Betsy and I killed the bear.”
“Well, anyway,” smiled Jennings, “you’re going to have one of your dearest wishes granted. Your old dorgs, Ginger, Pete, Major and Bones, won’t have to be fed to the starvin’ explorers. Here’s a day’s rations for a regiment of soldiers. I bet that big bear weighs a ton and a half.”
“Whoop-ee!” cried Joe springing to his feet and rushing over to embrace his astonished friend, Ginger. “That’s sure good news to us!”
“Sixteen inches between the ears,” pronounced Jennings after measuring with his hands the skull of the fallen Goliath of the North. “Some bear!”
“Some bear, I’d say!” echoed Joe.
“There’s a day’s work to be done on the tent,” said Jennings. “He ripped it up something awful. But we’ll have to make it do at least till we meet Munson.”
“Yes, and till we get ashore.”
“Guess so. Lend a hand and let’s see what shift we can make for a wink more of sleep before we march on.”
In a few moments Joe and Jennings were curled up in their sleeping-bags, snoring as if they were safe in bed at home.
At no time in Curlie Carson’s adventurous life had he experienced such strangely mingled emotions as he did while riding astride the white reindeer in the midst of the wild stampede. A sea of tossing antlers was all about him. Behind him was the red glare of a mountain of flame. What the next moment would bring forth he could not even guess. Now the mass of struggling life was crowded into a narrow runway between banks of a river and now they spread out over an open flat. Now his legs were pinched and bruised by antlers pressed against them, and now he rode almost alone. But always his white steed plunged on into the night made light as day by the great conflagration.
“Our hope is in the open tundra, open, treeless tundra,” he told himself over and over.
The great horde of creatures, seeming to know this by instinct, headed straight for it. Now he could see the tundra’s broad, white expanse gleaming before them. Would they make it? The fire was gaining upon them. He felt the hot breath of flame upon his cheek. The crowding from behind became all but unbearable. Beside him, mouth open, panting, raced a monstrous caribou. Before him crashed a spotted reindeer.
Would they make it? Now they were a half mile from safety, now a quarter. The smell of burning hair came stiflingly from the rear.
And now the foremost of the pack reached the open tundra. Then, like a swollen stream which has suddenly broken through its barriers, they spread out, racing still, over the silent glistening expanse of white prairie-like tundra. “A few of the weaker ones have perished. The great mass of this wild life is saved,” was Curlie’s mental comment.
A mile from the flames Curlie dropped stiffly from his place on the reindeer’s back and, patting his head in grateful appreciation, tied him with a loose rope to a willow bush.
“There,” he murmured, “feed up a bit.”
The reindeer began digging in the snow for moss, while Curlie climbed a near-by knoll to have a look at the strange spectacle.
As each wild creature pursued his own course, Curlie looked on with interest. The wolves were the first to slink away. The bear, a huge barren-ground grizzly, climbed a distant hill, there to suck his sore paws and nurse his grievances.
The caribou began passing to right and left like some army ordered to deploy and, in an astonishingly brief space of time, had all disappeared.
Only the reindeer, five hundred to a thousand in number, remained to feed peacefully upon the moss of the tundra.
“Well,” Curlie said to himself, “it seems I’ve come into possession of a reindeer herd! Don’t see’s they have any masters. No men in sight.”
Just then a dog barked. It was answered by a second one.
“Dogs!” he exclaimed. “Two of them. That’s interesting. Wonder what kind.”
Putting two fingers to his lips, he sent out a shrill whistle. A moment later two beautiful collies came racing up to him.
“Collies!” he cried in great joy, “reindeer collies. Why, here I am all set up in business, with a herd of reindeer and collies to help herd them.”
He sat down to think. This was undoubtedly the herd which had been held by the Indians. Had the fire caught them unawares and had they been burned alive? Or had they set the fire in the hope of concealing their theft of the reindeer?
“If they’re still alive and did not set the fire,” he told himself, “they’ll be along after the fire dies down and there’ll be more trouble. On the other hand, if I could take some of these deer out upon the ice floe to meet Joe and the explorers, it would be a great boon to them. Plenty of meat, the right kind too. It might save their lives.
“But there’s the outlaw!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Got to settle him first. He can’t—why he can’t be more than eight or ten miles from the food depot on Flaxman Island. A brisk morning’s walk, that’s all.”
After careful deliberation he decided to mount his reindeer and ride directly for the shore of the island. The island would be solidly connected to the shore by the ocean ice. He would search out the depot and ride boldly up to it.
“Surely,” he told himself, “no man who plots mischief is going to be afraid of an unarmed boy riding a reindeer. Hope I can catch him unawares and steal a march on him.”
Having put his plan into action, his faithful reindeer and he soon went racing away over the tundra. Coming to the shore of the island, in order to reach the north shore where the food depot was placed he began skirting it.
The ice was everywhere smooth as a floor and covered with just enough snow to give the reindeer good footing.
“Would be a regular lark if it wasn’t so dangerous. This marching right up to a man you have followed for thousands of miles is not what it’s cracked up to be.”
A high cut-bank hid the food depot, a long, low building, from his sight until he was all but upon it.
As he rounded the point of the cut-bank he saw a man, whose back was turned to him, disappear around the northwest corner of the building.
“Did he see me?” he breathed. “I’ll play he didn’t.”
Hastily wheeling his reindeer about, he retreated to the shelter of the cut-bank.
Here after a moment’s thought he tied the reindeer to an out-cropping willow root, then, on hands and knees, crept back to the corner.
Peeping around the point, he stood at strained attention. He saw no one, heard no one. “And yet he might be spying at me,” he whispered. “Got to risk it, though.”
At that he leaped to his feet and dashed full speed toward the cabin. The distance was two hundred yards. His heart beat madly. Would he be shot down before he reached that shelter?
Now he had covered half the distance, now two-thirds, now three-quarters. That his footsteps might not be heard, he was now running on tiptoes. With his breath coming in short gasps, he leaped to a corner of the cabin, threw himself upon the snow close to the wall and was for the moment safe.
“So much, so good,” he breathed. “Now if only he doesn’t see me first.”
Just as Joe and Jennings had finished their breakfast of polar bear meat and were preparing to go forward, the broad cake of ice on which they had camped gave a sudden lurch, then rose to such an angle as threatened to pitch them all into a yawning gap of black water.
Joe sprang forward. The dogs howled dismally. Only Jennings kept his head.
“Wonder if that’s the beginning of a break-up?” he said, wrinkling his brow. “If it is, every man-buck of that exploring party’s lost and we’ll be doin’ fine if we escape ourselves. It’s a tremendous affair when this ice gets to pilin’. Big cakes, wide as a city lot and thick as a one-story house, climb on top of each other like kittens playin’ with a yarn ball. What’s a man’s chance in a mess like that?”
There was, however, no thought of turning back. As long as there was a chance of saving Munson’s party their duty lay straight ahead. Only one part of their plans was changed. It was decided that they would pack their dogs as burros are packed on mountain trails and that until the return trip their sled should be abandoned.
It was a strange procession that started out over the roughly piled ice. Jennings, with a bulky sleeping-bag strapped to his back, led the way. He was followed by a long line of dogs. On each dog’s back was securely fastened a long strip of meat. Joe brought up the rear with the other sleeping-bag.
Had an airplane passed over them as they moved forward, its pilot might have seen what seemed some huge brown worm wriggling its way in and out among the ice piles.
To their great relief the ocean staged no more demonstrations. The ice remained motionless. All day, guided by a compass, they made their way forward. Far into the night they traveled. Two hours after midnight they ate and rested, then again pushed forward.
Just as the tardy sun was rising, they heard a shot in the distance and, to their great joy, found themselves a few moments later being cheered lustily by the worn-out and starving explorers.
Soon, over a fire of bear fat, caribou meat was roasting.
When, an hour later, they started back over the trail it was with high hopes of reaching shore in safety. Yet many a mile of treacherous ice lay between them and that coveted goal.
* * * * * * * *
The sight which met Curlie Carson’s gaze as he finally mustered up courage to creep up to the corner of the food depot building and peer around it, made his blood boil hot with anger.
Before him, crouching over and placing the last contributions to a huge bonfire of excelsior, paper and packing-boxes piled against the building, was the outlaw.
“Guessed right,” Curlie told himself, “and just in time. A moment more and the thing would have been done, the house all aflame. He means to burn it, but he won’t.”
A second glance showed him the outlaw’s sled piled high and his dog team grouped about it.
“All ready to race away,” he breathed as he tightened his muscles for a spring.
It was a desperate chance. Three paces from the man a rifle leaned against the cabin. The man was between Curlie and the rifle. There was not a moment to lose.
With a snarl like a tiger Curlie sprang for the other’s back. They went crashing to the snow in a heap.
The struggle was brief and terrific. When they broke their hold Curlie was bruised and bleeding but he had gained a point—an all important point. He was now between the man and his rifle.
Quicker than a cat, he sprang for it and the next instant aimed it square at the other’s breast.
With a wild cry of terror the man turned and fled toward the shore where ice was piled in jagged heaps.
Still panting from his recent struggle, Curlie followed him slowly. He was examining the rifle. It was of a new design, totally unknown to him.
“Good thing he didn’t know I couldn’t fire it,” he breathed. “They say what you don’t know don’t hurt you. Well, that’s one time it did.”
After a moment’s struggle he discovered the rifle’s secret. He smiled as he walked out upon the ocean’s ice.
“Thinks he can hide from me. Guess he failed to notice that in this still, cold air one’s breath rises far above him. He’ll have to stop breathing if he wishes to escape.”
He walked straight toward a high ice-pile and a moment later had the pleasure of seeing a dark object dart away from it.
“I could shoot him,” he told himself. “Deserves it too. Trying to burn those supplies and leave thirty men to freeze and starve! Wonder why he did it? I’ll find out. I’ll tire him out, then capture him. After that I’ll ask him.”
But he never did.
The game of hide-and-go-seek had lasted for two hours, when the man pursued started straight across a broad expanse of ice which was smooth as a floor.
“That looks dangerous—looks like new ice,” gasped Curlie as he threw himself flat down upon it.
With his sheath knife he hacked at it until a stream of water came bubbling up and he heard the wild rush of the current that raced on beneath it.
“Not more than half an inch thick!” he breathed to himself.
The next instant he was on his feet, backing off the ice and shouting: “Hey! Hey, there! Danger! Danger! Thin ice! Dan—”
He did not complete the last word, for just at that minute there came a wild shout of despair.
Splitting from end to end, the ice caved in at the middle. For a moment the man clung to the edge, then the current seized him.
Just before he disappeared his right hand went up and a shower of “sparks,” which glimmered and glistened like stars, went shimmering away across the dark water to light upon a broad stretch of ice which had not broken.
“Diamonds!” breathed Curlie. “Diamonds and rubies from Russia! He was the smuggler chief. Wonder why he threw them that way?”
The question had no answer. Yet, there they lay, thousands of dollars worth of jewels.
“Out of a fellow’s reach for the present,” Curlie told himself, “but I guess if the ice doesn’t break up any more for a day or two it will be easy to come out and pick them out of the ice.
“And now,” he told himself, “I must get in some quick work in behalf of our friends, the explorers. With a whole reindeer herd at my disposal I ought to be able to do something.”
He walked away for a hundred yards, then paused to look back.
“It’s tough,” he told himself, “tough to be blinked out like that. No question he deserved it, but there’s so much bad in the best of us that we can well afford to feel a lot of pity for the worst of us.”
With this he turned and hurried away toward the shore.
Joe Marion found that five members of the exploring party had had their feet so badly frozen that they were unable to walk. To carry these over the piled and tumbled ice to the spot where the sleds had been cached was no mean task. At the same time there was every possible need for speed. An unfavorable wind at this time would mean certain death to all of them.
They started out bravely and toiled on for many hours, without food. When they did pause, there was only one kind of food left to them—polar bear meat.
“About the worst kind of meat there is in the world,” sighed the great explorer as he tried to roast a bit of it over a blubber fire. “The only way you can get any real satisfaction out of it is to chew a piece of it till your jaws are tired, then swallow it part way down. When your jaws are rested, cough it up and start chewing all over again. When you have repeated this about four times it may go all the way down and stay down.”
They all laughed at this plan of procedure, but found on trying the meat that it was indeed the toughest proposition they had ever tackled.
“Like a bit off the neck of an old bull,” was Jennings’ comment.
When they had rested for a time they again turned their faces shoreward to resume their march against death.
In the meantime, on shore Curlie had made his way back to the reindeer herd. A careful study of the deer convinced him that certain of them were sled deer.
“Got their antlers half cut off; just stubs left,” he told himself. “Stands to reason that the Eskimo cut them off so they’d travel lighter in harness.”
Making a packing rope into a lasso, he succeeded in catching one of these deer by the stubs of his antlers. The marks of a harness told him he was right about these sled deer.
“I’ll just catch three of them and tie them to old Whitie. Then I’ll lead all four out to meet Joe and the explorers. They’ll be glad enough to have some fresh reindeer meat. We’ll make these three into venison, but not old Whitie! Never! He’s been my pal through too many narrow escapes. He’s going to live to tell the story.”
Some ten hours later, as the exploring party, weakened by lack of proper food, struggled forward over the tumbled ice, they were surprised to see the stubby antlers of a white sled deer appear around an ice pile.
“Reindeer!” someone shouted.
“Reindeer and Curlie Carson!” exclaimed Joe, fairly overcome with joy at meeting his old pal after so long a lapse of time.
Three hours later, having struggled forward to the safe and solid shore-ice, the whole party sat down to a real feast of reindeer steak, while a little distance away, chained to their sled, Major, the old guard, sent out short woof-woofs in the direction of old Whitie, and Pete, the huskie, who was nine-tenths wolf, sawed at his chain and ki-yied his desire to leap at the reindeer’s throat.
When they had finished, and had made such shift as they could for a night’s rest before making the remaining twenty-five miles to the food depot on Flaxman Island, Joe and Curlie sat long upon an overturned sled talking.
“So you think it was the smuggler chief?” said Joe as Curlie finished telling of his adventure at the food depot.
“Must have been. Look at the diamonds.”
“Think we can get them?”
“Believe so.”
“But, say, how about the Whisperer?”
“Didn’t see a sign of any such person. Guess she was just a hoax—never existed at all.”
“I’m not sure about that. I think she must be a real person.”
“Well, when we get back there on Flaxman Island we’ll look around.”
They arrived at the food depot next day. As soon as the exploring party had been made comfortable, Joe and Curlie set out to solve two problems, the problem of the Whisperer and that of saving the rubies and diamonds.
The question of the Whisperer was soon settled, or at least they believed it was, for, leading away from the island, they found a three days’ old sled track. The sled had been drawn by eight powerful dogs. There were no human footprints beside the sled track.
“Saw what happened to the outlaw and skipped,” was Joe’s comment.
“Yes, and if I had had time to look about I might have stopped her,” Curlie lamented.
“Would you have wanted to do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“She seems to be a pretty good sort; never did us anything but good. Though how she came to be traveling with that rascal is more than I can guess.”
“Well, she’s gone. How about our diamonds?”
Curlie led the way to the spot of the tragedy. There had been no snow. The spot was not hard to find. As Curlie had expected, the ice had frozen to a depth of six or eight inches.
“But where are the diamonds?” he exclaimed as he failed to catch any gleam from them.
A thorough search revealed not a single stone.
“Perhaps the Whisperer came back and got them,” suggested Joe.
“Couldn’t. The ice was too thin then.”
Suddenly Joe bent over to examine a hole the size of a lead pencil in the ice. Bending over he chipped away at the ice for a second, then, straightening up, gave out a wild shout.
“Whoopee!”
He held in his hand a splendid solitaire.
“Melted its way into the ice,” he explained.
A careful search revealed other such holes. After two hours the boys had succeeded in securing twenty-eight stones.
When they felt they had rescued the last one, they turned toward camp.