As soon as the crosses were planted and they had bowed their heads in silent prayer for the unknown victims of the north, they quitted the cavern and rejoined Constable Sloan.
A temporary camp was made, tea boiled, and bedding spread out, and while the boys thirstily gulped the hot beverage, the policemen discussed plans for the apprehension of Fred Mistak.
Among many other things the boys learned that they were upward of forty miles from the base of supplies Toma had been left alone to guard. The island upon which they thought they had landed when they left the mainland, seemed to stretch endlessly to the northeast, widening constantly until it disappeared under a solid ice cap.
Fuel oil for the special camp stoves was very low, and the policemen had only about three days’ provisions left, which was largely fresh musk-ox which Constable Sloan had shot during the man hunt. Also several of the dogs had died from piblockto, a sort of madness peculiar to the polar regions.
“According to what the policemen say,” Dick confided to Sandy, “we’ll have to make quick work of Mistak. With the supplies as low as they say they are, we’ll have to start for our base mighty soon or the north will do for us what it did for those two fellows at the end of the cave.”
“We can’t get back any too soon to suit me,” said Sandy earnestly.
The policemen rested the dogs and themselves for nearly two hours, when they harnessed up and once more set out upon the trail of Fred Mistak. Half a mile from the white Eskimo’s rendezvous the snowshoe tracks led on steadily, then there were signs of a delay in the trampled snow. One man had gone on from there, obviously to warn whoever had been left at the igloos of the proximity of the police. Beside the undeviating snowshoe prints leading toward Mistak’s igloos, there was a bewildering maze of tracks leading in all directions.
“They’ve scattered out, every man for himself,” was Constable Sloan’s opinion. “But if we hurry on to the camp we might catch a few of them.”
Corporal McCarthy thought this good counsel, and they set out immediately for the encampment from which Dick and Sandy had so recently escaped. But they found the igloos deserted, their round, white domes crushed and destroyed.
Constable Sloan explained to the boys that the igloos had been broken down by the superstitious Eskimos in Mistak’s band, who believed that if they left the igloos intact, evil spirits would come and live in them.