“Bowsie, you old rascal, why didn’t you tell me it was you?”
It was his own team. Having been unhitched at the time, they had recognized the stride of their master and had deserted with him. It was indeed a joyous meeting.
There was, however, no time to be wasted. The bitter cold air made Johnny’s skin crinkle like parchment. His feet, in contact with the stinging snow, were freezing.
Two of the dogs still wore their seal-skin harnesses. These Johnny tore off of them and having broken the bindings, wound them in narrow strips about his feet, tying them firmly around his ankles.
So, with his feet protected from the cold, he took up the fifteen miles of homeward race, the seven dogs ki-yi-ing at his heels.
Five miles farther on, he came upon a cache built by some Reindeer Chukche. In this he found a suit of deer skin. It was old, dirty and too small, but he crowded into it gratefully. Then with knees exposed and arms swinging bare to the elbows he prepared for a more leisurely ten miles home. He was quite confident that the lazy and stolid Russians were not following.
Johnny was well within sight of the friendly hill that sheltered his cabin from the north wind, when, with a sudden gasp, he stopped and stared. Coming apparently out of the very heart of the hill, an immense brown object extended itself along the horizon and at last floated free in air.
To understand this strange phenomenon, we must know what had been happening at camp, and what Pant had been doing since finding the mysterious black bill.
The ball was covered with black paper. This much, Pant discovered at once. The rest he left to the seclusion of his pup tent and the light of a candle.
When at last he unwrapped the paper, he found nothing more than a film, a small, moving-picture film. This had been developed, dried, then rewound on a spool. The remainder of the inner contents of the ball was nothing but blank paper with never a scratch of writing upon it. When Pant had examined each scrap carefully, he held the film to the light. There were pictures on it. As his keen eyes studied them, his expression changed from that of puzzled interest to intense surprise, almost of horror.