Part 13 (2/2)

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.

CHAPTER XII

”GET THAT MAN”

The trip from Cape Prince of Wales to Nome was fraught with many dangers. Already the spring thaw had begun. Had not the Eskimo whom Johnny employed to take him to the Arctic metropolis with his dog team been a marvel at skirting rotten ice and water holes in Port Clarence Bay, at swimming the floods on Tissure River, and at canoeing across the flooded Sinrock, Johnny might never have reached his journey's end.

As it was, two weeks from the time he left East Cape in Siberia, he stood on the sand spit at Nome, Alaska. By his side stood Hanada, who was still acting the part of an Eskimo and who had come down a few days ahead of him.

They were viewing a rare sight, the pa.s.sing out to sea of the two miles of sh.o.r.e ice. The spring thaw had been followed by an off-sh.o.r.e wind which was carrying the loosened ice away. Johnny's interest was evenly divided between this rare spectacle and the recollection of the events that had recently transpired.

”Look!” said Hanada. ”I believe the ice will carry the farther end of the cable tramway out to sea.”

Johnny looked. It did seem that what the boy said was true. Already the cable appeared to be as tight as a fiddle string.

The tramway was a cable which stretched from a wooden tower set upon a stone pillar jutting from the sea to a similar tower built upon the land. This tramway, during the busy summer months of open sea, is used in lieu of a harbor and docks to bring freight and pa.s.sengers ash.o.r.e.

This is done by drawing a swinging platform over the cable from tower to tower and back again. The platform at the present moment swung idly at the sh.o.r.e end of the cable. The beach had been fast locked in ice for eight months and more.

”Looks like it might go,” said Johnny absentmindedly.

Neither he nor the j.a.p had seen or heard anything of the Russian. Two things would seem to indicate that that mysterious fugitive was in town; three times Johnny had found himself being closely watched by certain rough-looking Russian laborers, and once he had narrowly averted being attacked in a dark street at night by a gang of the same general character.

Hanada had not yet chosen to reveal his ident.i.ty, and Johnny had not questioned him.

Only the day before a placard in the post office had given him a start.

It was an advertis.e.m.e.nt offering a thousand dollars reward for knowledge which would lead to the arrest of a certain Russian Radical of much importance. This man was reported to have made his way through the Allied front near Vladivostok, and to have started north, apparently with the intention of crossing to America. To capture him, the placard declared, would be an act of practical patriotism.

Johnny had stared in wonder at the photograph attached. It was the likeness of a man much younger than the Russian they had followed so far, but there could be no mistaking that sharp chin and frowning brow.

They had doubtless followed that very man for hundreds of miles only to lose him at this critical moment.

<script>