Sandy’s rifle clattered to the ice, and Dick’s followed quickly, while both raised their hands. The white Eskimo then came forward and picked up their rifles. He addressed them in broken English, which had a French accent mingled with the Eskimo tang:
“I ees pleased ver’ much, boys. While zee poleece chase zee wild goose, I git zere little helpers. Zat not so?”
“You may have the drop on us now,” retorted Dick with more spirit than was really in his half-famished, half-frozen body, “but we have friends nearby and you will wish you never had troubled us.”
The white Eskimo laughed scoffingly. “You think you make zee fool of me. Ha! Zose mounted police long way from here. They look, look everywhere for Fred Mistak, but Mistak like the ghost. He disappear like nossing—quick!”
Dick remained silent at this, thinking it best not to arouse the ill-humor of their savage captor. He was interested, if disappointed to learn that their friends, the policemen, were so far away. He had half-hoped the storm had thrown them back upon land somewhere near the other members of the expedition.
Mistak seemed to have no desire to loiter in the vicinity of the capture and speedily forced the boys to fall in line and start off inland. Tired as they were, the two prisoners assumed a calmness they did not feel as they began the long climb up a steep trail that led to the summit of the cliffs which formed that portion of the coast.
Dick studied the evil faces of his captors and saw that only few of them were Eskimos. The greater number of the gang included renegade Indians, half-breeds, and one who seemed a full blooded white man. Dick did not doubt that every man of them either carried a price on his head or was at least a fugitive from the courts of justice. The white man and two of the Indians had rifles, and Mistak wore a revolver on a belt about his waist.
The sinister company climbed to the top of the cliffs, forcing the boys along at the point of spears, and marched on for about a mile across the snow and ice to what seemed to be a temporary encampment. Six igloos had been built in the shelter of a ridge, and two sledges loaded with frozen seal blubber lay under the watch of an Eskimo.
Mistak gruffly ordered Dick and Sandy into an igloo. As soon as the boys had reached the crude bedding inside the snow house, they gave over to the great weariness that possessed them. Lost to everything but the need of sleep, they fell into a deep unconsciousness regardless of the fact that they were in the hands of enemies from whom they might expect no mercy.
Dick knew not how long he had slept when he aroused to hear someone at the entrance of the igloo. One of the Eskimos crawled half way in with two chunks of seal blubber in his arms. These he tossed at the two recumbent forms with a few guttural and unintelligible words in his native tongue, and crawled out again.