Just how long he slept he could not tell.  When he awoke it was with a feeling of great peril tugging at his heart.  His first conscious thought was that the aperture above him had, in some way, been darkened.  Instantly his eyes sought that opening.  What he saw there caused his heart to pause and his eyes to bulge.

Directly above him, seemingly poised for a drop, was a vicious looking hook.  With a keen point and a barb fully three inches across, with a shaft of half-inch steel which was driven into a pole three inches in diameter and of indefinite length, it could drive right through Johnny’s stomach, and pin him to the planks beneath.  And, as his startled eyes stared fixedly at it, the thing shot downward.

CHAPTER V

“Friend?  Enemy?”

Johnny Thompson, before he joined the army, had been considered one of the speediest men of the boxing ring.  His brain worked like lightning, and every muscle in his body responded instantly to its call.  Johnny had not lost any of his speed.  It was well that he had not, for, like a spinning car-wheel, he rolled over twice before the hook buried itself to the end of its barb in the pungent plank on which he had reclined an instant before.

Nor did Johnny stop rolling then.  He continued until he bumped against the skin wall of his abode.  This was fortunate also, for he had not half regained his senses when two almost instantaneous explosions shook the igloo, tore the plank floor into shreds, shooting splinters about, and even through the double skin wall, and filling Johnny’s eyes with powder smoke and dust.

Johnny sat up with one hand on his automatic.  He was fully awake.

“Is that all?” he drawled.  “Thanks!  It’s enough, I should say.  Johnny Thompson exit.”  A wry grin was on his face.  “Johnny Thompson killed by a falling whale harpoon; shot to death by a whale gun; blown to atoms by a whale bomb.  Exit Johnny.  They do it in the movies, I say!”

But that was not quite all.  The blazing seal oil lamps had overturned.  Splinters from the floor were catching fire.  Johnny busied himself at beating these out.  As soon as this had been accomplished, he stepped outside.

From an awe-struck ring of native women and children, who had been attracted by the explosion, the little Jap girl darted.

“Oh, Meester Thompsie!” she exclaimed, wringing her hands, “so terrible, awful a catastrophe!  Are you not killed?  So terrible!”

Johnny grinned.

“Nope,” he said, putting out a hand to console her.  “I’m not killed, nor even blown to pieces.  What I’d like to know is, who dropped that harpoon.”

He looked from face to face of the silent circle.  Not one showed a sign of any knowledge of the affair.  They had heard the explosion and had run from their homes to see what had happened.

Turning toward the cliff, from which the harpoon had been dropped, Johnny studied it carefully.  No trace of living creature was to be discovered there.  Then he looked again at the circle of brown faces, seeking any recent arrival.  There was none.