“For a couple of kids you’re the nerviest he-men I ever met with,” Sloan spoke up, a courageous grin on his pain drawn face.
“I’ll second that,” hastened Corporal McCarthy.
When Dick and Sandy left the igloo, they walked very straight, and they were silent. The dreaded long night of the northland was close at hand and they must stand up under hardships more terrible than they had either ever endured, for, had Constable Sloan not called them “the nerviest he-men I ever met with?”
CHAPTER XVIII
THE LONG NIGHT
The last of the sun was seen October 18th. Corporal McCarthy had been forced to take charge of the camp until Constable Sloan recovered from his wounds, and so the long-thwarted capture of Mistak, the white Eskimo, was due for another long delay under the pitchy blackness of the Arctic night.
Moonshine Sam recovered, and was kept constantly under guard, though he repeated again and again his promises to keep the peace if he were put on parole. The half-breed, who had staggered into camp with the white outlaw, died from exposure, and was buried, under a cairn of stones a few miles from camp.
Corporal Thalman’s iron constitution soon rebuilt itself, now that he was among friends, and had almost all he could eat. And so the little garrison was stronger by one more man.
Under the smothering darkness that now had descended upon the land, time passed as if the hours were days, the weeks months, and a month a year. The men and boys contrived games of all kinds to play indoors, yet they had to economize on their fuel oil, and whenever they could, they slept away the hours.
It was with great joy that they greeted the coming of the moon that first month of uninterrupted darkness. Fortunately fair weather came along with the bright disc in the Heavens, and everyone sallied forth to hunt and play in the open air.
The policemen went some distance inland during the period, but due to the liability of the weather to change for the worst at any hour, they dared not go on any protracted search for Mistak. They did, however, bring in three musk-oxen and a polar bear.