Mistak seemed to have no desire to loiter in the vicinity of the capture and speedily forced the boys to fall in line and start off inland. Tired as they were, the two prisoners assumed a calmness they did not feel as they began the long climb up a steep trail that led to the summit of the cliffs which formed that portion of the coast.
Dick studied the evil faces of his captors and saw that only few of them were Eskimos. The greater number of the gang included renegade Indians, half-breeds, and one who seemed a full blooded white man. Dick did not doubt that every man of them either carried a price on his head or was at least a fugitive from the courts of justice. The white man and two of the Indians had rifles, and Mistak wore a revolver on a belt about his waist.
The sinister company climbed to the top of the cliffs, forcing the boys along at the point of spears, and marched on for about a mile across the snow and ice to what seemed to be a temporary encampment. Six igloos had been built in the shelter of a ridge, and two sledges loaded with frozen seal blubber lay under the watch of an Eskimo.
Mistak gruffly ordered Dick and Sandy into an igloo. As soon as the boys had reached the crude bedding inside the snow house, they gave over to the great weariness that possessed them. Lost to everything but the need of sleep, they fell into a deep unconsciousness regardless of the fact that they were in the hands of enemies from whom they might expect no mercy.
Dick knew not how long he had slept when he aroused to hear someone at the entrance of the igloo. One of the Eskimos crawled half way in with two chunks of seal blubber in his arms. These he tossed at the two recumbent forms with a few guttural and unintelligible words in his native tongue, and crawled out again.
Dick was terribly hungry, and though the seal blubber did not exactly appeal to his appetite, he found, upon tasting the greasy meat, that it was better than nothing. He awakened Sandy, and together they made their first meal upon raw seal blubber, finding that the more they ate of it the better it tasted.
“It’s not bad when a fellow’s half starved,” Sandy remarked as they finished the last of the blubber.
Dick was about to answer when the sound of voices outside interrupted him. He signaled Sandy to remain quiet and together they listened. But they could not distinguish the words through the thick walls of the igloo, though they recognized the voice of Fred Mistak.