“Are you hurt?” he gasped.

“No!  Are you?”

“Not a scratch.  Some jolly little weapon, them ice-h’anchors.  H’I’ll wear one of ’em h’in me belt from now on!  H’I ‘ates t’ think ‘ow cold th’ water was when h’I pitched ’em h’in, them other two.”

“Kill ’em?”

“Not that bad.  But mebby they’ll drown.  H’I’ll go see.  H’I’d ‘ate t’ see ‘em climbin’ back.”

He hurried up the hatchway, followed closely by Dave.

Not a sign of the two men was to be seen, either on the submarine, in the water or on the solid shore-ice, a few rods away.

“What d’ y’ think of that?” asked Jarvis, mopping his brow.  “They’re gone!”

“Perhaps they drowned.”

“Mebbe drowned—­mebby they’re ‘id h’in th’ h’ice.”

“Well, anyway, we’re rid of them,” said Dave.  “We’ll sew the dead one up in a blanket and throw him overboard; then we’ll be going back.  Think how all fussed up the Doctor will be.”  The boy chuckled.

“Going back?” Jarvis stared, as if unable to believe his ears.  “Going back?  And the treasure city within peep of h’our h’eyes.  Going back, did y’ say?  H’I ‘ates t’ think ‘ow rich we’ll be, you an’ me.”

The sun was setting behind the dark line of timber.  Some object at a point where the timber ended and the tundra began cast back the sunlight with a golden glow.

“D’ y’ see it, lad?” exclaimed the excited old man.  “D’y’see it?  H’it’s gold.”

CHAPTER XII

THE RUSSIAN TIGER

When Rainey and Thompson, accompanied by the native, left the village to hunt the strange creature that was working havoc with the village reindeer herd, they walked directly away from the rows of deerskin houses toward the tundra at the foot of the hills where, some five miles away, the deer were herded.

The five miles were accomplished mostly in silence.  Each man was busy with his own thoughts.  As for the little native, he seemed quite without fear as long as he was with the powerful “spirits of dead whales.”

When they approached the brown line of the herd that spread itself across the horizon, the boy led them around it to a point beyond where the beast attacked the young deer.

There, though the ground had been much trampled by the maddened herd, they found many traces of the attack.  Splotches of blood stained the snow and made a well-defined trail where the creature had carried off its prey.  Soon they were beyond the patches of trampled snow and then the native left them to follow the trail alone.

Faintly, from the distance, came the rattle and clatter of reindeer antlers as the herd moved about.  Above them, in all its silver glory, shone the moon.  Now and again the hunters gave a start, as a ptarmigan, roused from its slumbers, went whirring away.  To them every purple shadow of rock or bush or snow-pile might be the beast crouching over his kill.