The man did not know the exact place from which the three strangers had come; it was somewhere far South, known as Ki-yek-tuk.  The three had been a long time in the village and had inspired all the people with a great dread by telling them of a giant race who wore fierce beards like the walrus; who killed with a great noise at long distances, and who would break any jail except one of ivory.  They had said that probably one or two of these fierce men would come at first, and, perhaps, if these were made prisoners, no others would follow.  Hence the jail.  And hence, too, the imprisonment of Dave and Jarvis.  The natives had felt sure that they were the advance guard of these wicked, cruel men who had come to rob and kill.  But now, of course, they knew they were spirits of dead whales, and would do them no harm.

As for the tusks with the inlaid gold, the man said they had been traded for by a very old man who had made a journey with a reindeer, ten nights and days from their village, due west.  There, beside a great river, he had found a numerous people, who lived in houses of logs, very large and warm.  He said, too, that these people had great quantities of this yellow metal.  Their houses were decorated with it; their fur garments glistened with it; their council house was encrusted with it.

“But,” he added at the end, “the metal was too soft for spear points and arrowheads, too heavy for garments, and not good for food.  As for houses, did they not have their deerskins and walrus-pelts?  So the old man never went back for more.”

Dave had been sitting by the old engineer as he secured this information bit by bit through the interpreter.  His eyes sparkled with excitement when he spoke.

“Well,” he asked, when the native had finished, “what do you make of it?”

“Make of it?” exclaimed the old man.  “It’s plain as the nose on your face.  H’as h’I see it, there’s gold in this land just h’as h’I said before, plenty of it.  H’and this ’ere tribe, way west there some’ers; they’s been driven there by the Roosians, er by other tribes.  Mayhaps they’s Roosian h’exiles themselves.  Mayhaps they’s one of the seven lost tribes of h’Israel, what you read of in the Book.  ’Owever that may be, it’s there, and h’I ’ates to think ’ow rich you h’and h’I’d be h’if h’it wasn’t fer this ‘ere crazy Doctor’s achin’ to see th’ Pole.”

“Jarvis,” Dave leaned forward eagerly, “we’ll take the Doctor to the Pole, then we’ll hire a submarine or a schooner and work our way back here.”

“We will that, me lad,” said the old man, gripping the boy’s hand.  “But then,” he added more soberly, “maybe it won’t be a bit o’ use.  Maybe the Japs will get it first.”

“The Japs.”

“Sure!  The Japs.  Ar’ ye that blind?  Don’t ye know all the time the three rascals we well-nigh killed was Japs?  Can’t ye see ’ow they don’t want the h’Americans or th’ Roosians to git t’ the treasure of this peninsula?  Can’t ye see ‘ow bloomin’ easy h’it’d be for ’em to put two or three spies in h’every bloomin’ native village on the whole Roosian coast, and take the entire peninsula fer th’ Jap Kaiser, or whatever they call ’im?  Can’t ye see ‘ow th’ thing’d work?”