When finally Cheviot raised his eyes the glitter was gone from the sill.
While the two in the cabin laid their plans and made a list of provisions and requirements, a man was creeping on hands and knees, through willow scrub and reeds, down to the boat that lay moored in the cove below the cabin.
Christianson sat talking to Hjalmar the herder, of the Government project of introducing reindeer among the Alaskan natives, when the door of the private office was flung wide. They looked round and saw Björk standing there.
On the sallow mask a strange light shining. The hard lips twitched in a recurrent rictus, showing a dog-like gleam of sharp eye-tooth, while the rest of the mouth held rigid. If the tremendous force that locked the lean jaws was lost upon the onlooker, it must have been the insane light in Björk’s eyes that made the reindeer-herder whisper, “He’s got a fit.”
But Christianson had only flung back his long, straight hair, and grasped the rude arms of his big chair.
“Björk,” he said, “iss it a visshun?”
“Ye—h—h!” Björk answered through shut teeth. An instant longer he stood silent, with his hairy hands clenched, and a barely perceptible forward and backward swaying of the tense body. Then, with an effort as of forcing steel to part, he opened his welded lips and said rapidly in Swedish, “Have we not fed the hungry?”
“Aye,” said Christianson.
“Have we not nursed the sick? Have we not preached the Gospel to every creature?”
“Aye, aye,” from Christianson.