Mary Hughes had walked the entire length of the long dock at Anchorage, Alaska. Now, having rounded a great pile of merchandise, tents, tractors, groceries, hammers, axes, and boxes of chocolate bars she came quite suddenly upon the oddest little man she had ever seen. Even for a girl in her late teens, Mary was short and slender. This man was no larger than she.
“A Japanese,” she thought as her surprised eyes took in his tight-fitting black suit, his stiff collar and bright tie. “But no, a Jap wouldn’t look like that.” She was puzzled and curious. At that particular moment, she had nothing to do but indulge her curiosity.
Together with hundreds of other “home-seekers”—she smiled as she thought of herself as a home-seeker—she had been dumped into the bleak Arctic morning. Some of the goods that were being hoisted by a long steel crane from the depths of a ship, belonged to Mary, to Mark her brother, and to Florence Huyler her cousin. There was, for the time, nothing they could do about that. So—
“I am Mister Il-ay-ok.”
To her surprise, she heard the little man addressing her.
“Oh,” she breathed. She was thinking, “Now perhaps I am to know about this little man.” She was, but not too much—at least not for some time.
“Oh! So you are Mr. Il-ay-ok,” she encouraged. “Is this your home?”
“Oh no, no indeed!” He spoke as if he were reading from a book. “My home is quite distant. North,” he pointed away.
“Then you—”
Mary did not finish. At that instant a loud, harsh-sounding voice broke in upon them. “Mister Il-ay-ok! MISTER! Har! Har! Har! That’s good!” The man who had made his appearance, as if by magic, from the great pile of merchandise, where he had, the girl thought with an inward shudder, been hiding, burst into a roar of hoarse laughter. To say that Mary was surprised and startled would not express it at all.