“Sipsa says the hunting was good here, and he could not resist carrying the news to his people,” Constable Sloan interpreted. “He adds that he had trouble in convincing them that the glacier was not haunted by bad spirits. The drivers who deserted us carried the news back to the village that the ‘white Eskimo’ had changed all of us to ice.”
“It wouldn’t take an evil spirit to do that in this country,” Dick remarked to Sandy, recalling the frozen bodies they had found so recently.
Having eaten their fill and had a few hours’ nap, Dick and Sandy crawled out of their igloo and commenced a detailed inspection of their native visitors. While most of the men and women were out hunting, a few old women and children had remained behind.
The old women were making boots and shirts of sealskin and caribou hide, using an ivory needle and thread of caribou sinews. They did not seem to mind having Dick and Sandy watch them, and so the boys satisfied their curiosity to the utmost.
At one of the igloos a woman was cleaning a fur rug or robe by an interesting method. She poured melted snow water upon the fur, and shook it in the cold air until the tiny drops of moisture clinging to the hairs froze into globules of ice. It seemed that the particles of dirt in the fur were imprisoned in the little balls of ice. When the fur seemed well covered with the ice crust, the women lay it fur-side down in clean snow and beat it for a long time. This done, she hung up the robe and beat the fur side, the ice particles flying to right and left. When the last of the ice balls had disappeared from the fur, the robe seemed as dry and glossy as if it still was on the animal that first had borne it.
The boys were called away from the Eskimos by Corporal McCarthy who wished them to explain to him again just what they had heard regarding Corporal Thalman, the lost officer, while they were prisoners at Mistak’s rendezvous.
CHAPTER XIII
A NARWHAL
Certain, now, through the chance discoveries of Dick and Sandy, that Corporal Thalman was alive somewhere in the frozen land, the policemen hastened to prepare for another venture into Mistak’s outlaw fastnesses. The nearness of the polar winter, or period of complete darkness, also served to hasten them in their work, for without the sun to light the trail and under the terrible cold that accompanied the long night, they could not hope to accomplish anything.
Two days after pulling into their base of supplies from their first long and unsuccessful man hunt, the policemen once more set out in the direction they had lost Mistak, leaving Dick and Sandy with plenty of good advice and many precautions for them to avoid the dangers which they had fallen into when first left to take care of themselves.
Dick and Sandy put in the first twelve hours following the departure of the officers, in cleaning and oiling extra rifles from the supplies, to replace those taken by Mistak, and in practicing with a harpoon. Sipsa proved a willing teacher in the art of handling this death dealing weapon effectively, and while the boys could not begin to equal the accuracy of the life-time trained natives, they were attentive students and soon became fair marksmen.