“What is it, then?” Sandy wanted to know, as he cut a new wick for a seal oil lamp.
“Why, Mistak, of course.”
“Then, how is it that he can see in the dark?”
“He can’t, any more than we can,” Dick replied. “He just prowls around, and when he runs into someone he takes the chance to put a scare into all of us.”
“Sounds reasonable,” admitted Sandy. “But, gee, I don’t like the idea of him hanging around. Suppose he should take a notion to attack us. We’d be just about helpless in these igloos.”
Dick realized Sandy was right and he spoke to Corporal McCarthy about it as soon as he came in off a watch at Moonshine Sam’s igloo.
“I don’t think Mistak has the nerve to attack us,” Corporal McCarthy replied. “The fellow is sly as a fox, but he’s afraid of the police, don’t you believe he isn’t?”
The following interminable night seemed to prove Corporal McCarthy right in his opinion that Mistak lacked the daring to perpetrate an open attack. Yet that did not prevent the outlaw from continuing his strike and run tactics. No one could feel safe with these skulking enemies waiting in the pitchy blackness of the Arctic night to kill, maim or steal.
Then, thirty-six hours before they anticipated the return of the moon, Sandy disappeared. He had gone to Moonshine Sam’s igloo with meat for Constable Sloan then on watch, and had neither returned to his igloo nor reported to his destination. A blundering search of the vicinity in the darkness proved futile, and he could not be located in any of the Eskimo igloos.
Alive to the danger which would threaten Sandy if he were lost in the vast land of darkness, Dick appealed to Corporal McCarthy.