But the Indian who looked in at the igloo entrance did not come in. He seemed satisfied that the two prisoners were asleep and departed to other business.
However, the narrow escape from detection put a scare into them that set them to devising some other means of covering up their work when visited by one of the gang. With chunks of snow from the tunnel they fashioned a form to resemble a body and wrapping this in bedding they placed it in as life-like a sleeping position as possible near the tunnel. If they were visited again the one on watch could lie down over the entrance to the tunnel, while the other could lie still under the snow without leaving the tunnel.
After this ruse was ready for use they felt more confident of success and redoubled their efforts.
It was Dick who first poked a hole through the snow to the light of the outside world. His heart leaping at the thought that they had succeeded, he looked out of the hole, only to receive one of the greatest shocks of his life. Not ten feet away sat an Eskimo, one of Mistak’s band, chewing on a chunk of seal blubber! As Dick watched with terror-widened eyes, the Eskimo looked directly at him, and paused in his eating. Dick could not force himself to move. Every moment he expected some sign from the Eskimo that he had discovered the attempt to escape, yet the native finally resumed his eating without any alarming actions.
Breathing a sigh of relief Dick plugged up the hole and lay on his stomach in the snow tunnel, wondering if there had been some mistake in their calculations which had brought them out on the wrong side of the snowdrift. But no, they were on the right side of the drift. Nothing could have so confused them as to cause any such disastrous error. The Eskimo must have been there by chance. Dick decided that the native had been hiding from the rest of his band, probably because he had stolen more rations of food than was his allotment.
After waiting a reasonable length of time, Dick cleared the peep hole and looked out. The Eskimo was gone.
Hastily Dick wriggled back through the tunnel and reported to Sandy the welcome news that they had reached the surface of the drift and could now leave the igloo.
Hoping they might delay the discovery of their escape until they had a good start, they fashioned a second dummy from rolled bedding and Sandy, the last one into the snow tunnel, drew this over the hole after him.
A few minutes later they had cautiously broken out of the snowdrift and were crawling along the snow bank away from the encampment.
Once in the ravine, into which the drift led, they strapped on their snowshoes, which Mistak had not thought it necessary to take from them, and made good time away from their captors.