“Poison?” suggested Johnny.
“Not a sign of that either. Of course, to be sure of that, one must make a post-mortem examination. Let’s get him out of this damp, black hole.”
They were soon moving out of the dark and forbidding interior of the mine toward the welcome sunlight that flooded the entrance.
As they approached this entrance, the unreliable flashlight flickered out for a second, and, in that second, Johnny experienced a distinct shock. Again, it seemed to him that he caught the gleam of a round, yellow ball of light, such as one sees when looking toward a cat in the dark. When the light flashed on, Pant had moved, but Johnny concluded that he might easily have been standing where the ball of light had shown.
As he prepared to leave the mine, Johnny paused for a moment, trying to sense once more that strange earth shudder. It seemed to him that it was less distinct here than it had been further back in the mine. But of this he could not be sure. It might easily be that the slight sounds and the sensations of light and air here dulled his sensibilities, making it harder for him to catch the shudder.
The post-mortem revealed no signs of poison. They buried Langlois the next day in the grave that had been picked and blasted out of the solidly frozen earth of the hillside looking over the ice-blocked sea.
It was a solemn but picturesque scene that struck Johnny’s eye as he neared the grave. Before him stood his comrades with bowed and uncovered heads. In the distance stretched the unmeasured expanse of the ice-whitened sea. Beyond, on the other side, lay the equally unmeasured expanse of snow-whitened land. Far in the distance stretched the endless chain of mountains, which to-day seemed to smoke with the snow blown a quarter mile above their summits. In the foreground, not a hundred yards away, was a group of perhaps fifty people. These were Chukches, natives, very like the Eskimos of Alaska. They had come to witness from afar the strange scene of the “alongmeet’s” (white man’s) burial.
The scene filled Johnny with a strange sense of awe. Yet, as he came nearer to the grave, he frowned. He had thought that all his men stood with uncovered heads. One did not. The man who had been the first to discover the dead man, Pant, stood with his fur hood tied tightly over his ears.
Johnny was about to rebuke him, but the word died on his lips. “Pshaw!” he whispered to himself, “there’s trouble enough without starting a quarrel beside an open grave.”
Jarvis, who was the oldest man of the group and had been brought up in the Church of England, read a Psalm and a prayer, then with husky voice repeated: