Part 5 (1/2)

Johnny Thompson, before he joined the army, had been considered one of the speediest men of the boxing ring. His brain worked like lightning, and every muscle in his body responded instantly to its call. Johnny had not lost any of his speed. It was well that he had not, for, like a spinning car-wheel, he rolled over twice before the hook buried itself to the end of its barb in the pungent plank on which he had reclined an instant before.

Nor did Johnny stop rolling then. He continued until he b.u.mped against the skin wall of his abode. This was fortunate also, for he had not half regained his senses when two almost instantaneous explosions shook the igloo, tore the plank floor into shreds, shooting splinters about, and even through the double skin wall, and filling Johnny's eyes with powder smoke and dust.

Johnny sat up with one hand on his automatic. He was fully awake.

”Is that all?” he drawled. ”Thanks! It's enough, I should say. Johnny Thompson exit.” A wry grin was on his face. ”Johnny Thompson killed by a falling whale harpoon; shot to death by a whale gun; blown to atoms by a whale bomb. Exit Johnny. They do it in the movies, I say!”

But that was not quite all. The blazing seal oil lamps had overturned.

Splinters from the floor were catching fire. Johnny busied himself at beating these out. As soon as this had been accomplished, he stepped outside.

From an awe-struck ring of native women and children, who had been attracted by the explosion, the little j.a.p girl darted.

”Oh, Meester Thompsie!” she exclaimed, wringing her hands, ”so terrible, awful a catastrophe! Are you not killed? So terrible!”

Johnny grinned.

”Nope,” he said, putting out a hand to console her. ”I'm not killed, nor even blown to pieces. What I'd like to know is, who dropped that harpoon.”

He looked from face to face of the silent circle. Not one showed a sign of any knowledge of the affair. They had heard the explosion and had run from their homes to see what had happened.

Turning toward the cliff, from which the harpoon had been dropped, Johnny studied it carefully. No trace of living creature was to be discovered there. Then he looked again at the circle of brown faces, seeking any recent arrival. There was none.

”Come!” he said to the j.a.p girl.

Taking her hand, he led her from house to house of the village. Beyond two to three old women, too badly crippled to walk, the houses were found to contain no one.

”Well, one thing is sure,” Johnny observed, ”the Chukche reindeer herders have not come. It was not they who did it.”

”No,” answered the j.a.p girl.

”Say!” exclaimed Johnny, in a tone more severe than he had ever used with his companion, ”why in thunder can't we get out of this hole? What are we sticking here for?”

”Can't tell.” The girl wrung her hands again. ”Can't tell. Can't go, that's all. You go; all right, mebby. Can't go my. That's all. Mebby go to-morrow; mebby next day. Can't tell.”

Johnny was half inclined to believe that she was in league with the treachery which hung over the place, and had shown itself in the form of loaded harpoons, but when he realized that she did not urge him to stay, he found it impossible to suspect her.

”Well, anyway, darn it!”

”What?” she smiled.

”Oh, nothing,” he growled, and turned away.

Two hours later Johnny was lying on the flat ledge of the rocky cliff from which the harpoon had been dropped. He was, however, a hundred feet or more down toward the bay. He was watching a certain igloo, and at the same time keeping an eye on the sh.o.r.e ice. Iyok-ok had gone seal hunting. When he returned over the ice, Johnny meant to have a final confab with him in regard to starting north.

As to the vigil he kept on the igloo, that was the result of certain suspicions regarding the occupants of that particular shelter. There was a dog team which hung about the place. These dogs were larger and sleeker than the other animals of the village. Their fights with other dogs were more frequent and severe. That would naturally mark them as strangers. Johnny had made several journeys of a mile or two up and down the beach trail, and, as far as he could tell, the man of mystery whose trail they had followed to this village had not left the place.

”Of course,” he had told himself, ”he might have been one of the villagers returning to his home. But that doesn't seem probable.”

From all this, Johnny had arrived at the conclusion that the watching of this house would yield interesting results.

It did. He had not been lying on the cliff half an hour, when the figure of a man came backing out of the igloo's entrance. Johnny whistled. He was sure he had seen that pair of shoulders before. And the parka the man wore; it was not of the very far north. There was a smoothness about the tan and something about the cut of it that marked it at once as coming from a Russian shop, such as Wo Cheng kept.