Everybody now bent eagerly forward as if for a spring.  Every hand held a cup.  But at this instant there came the shuffle of footsteps outside.  Instantly every cup disappeared.  The kettle was lifted to a dark corner.  The room was silent when Johnny stepped inside.

“Hello,” he shouted.

“Hello!  Hello!” came from every corner.

“Where you come from?” asked the former tender of the still.

“East Cape.”

“Where you go?”

“Cape Prince of Wales.”

“Puck-mum-ie?” (Now?) The man betrayed his anxiety.

“Canak-ti-ma-na” (I don’t know), said Johnny seating himself on the table and allowing his glance to sweep the place from corner to corner.  “I don’t know,” he repeated, slowly.  “How are you all anyway?”

“Ti-ma-na” (Not so bad), answered the spokesman.

Johnny was enjoying himself.  He was exactly in the position of some good motherly soul who held a pumpkin pie before the eyes of several hungry boys.  The only difference was that the pie Johnny was thinking of was raw, so exceeding raw that it would turn these natives into wild men.  So Johnny decided that, like as not, he wouldn’t let them have it at all.

Johnny enjoyed the situation nevertheless.  He was mighty unpopular at that moment, he knew, but his unpopularity now was nothing to what it would be in a very short time.  Thinking of this, he measured the distance to the door very carefully with his eye.

At last, when it became evident that if he didn’t move someone else would, he turned to the still manager and said: 

“Well, guess I’ll be going.  Got a match?”

He produced the borrowed cigaret.  A sigh of hope escaped from the group of natives and a match was thrust upon him.

“Thanks.”

The match was of the sulphur kind, the sort that never blow out.

Nonchalantly Johnny lighted the cigaret, then, all too carelessly, he flipped the match.  Though it seemed a careless act, it was deftly done.

There came a sudden cry of alarm.  But too late; the match dropped squarely into the keg of alcohol.  The next instant the place was all alight with the blaze of the liquor, which flamed up like oil.

“This way out,” exclaimed Johnny leading the procession for the door.  Lightly he bounded down the hill.  He caught one glimpse of the young woman as he passed, but this was no time for lingering farewells.  The owner of the still was on his trail.

Dodging this way and that, sliding over a wide expanse of ice, Johnny at last eluded his pursuers in the wildly tumbled ice piles of the sea.  As he paused to catch his breath he heard the soft pat-pat of a footstep and glancing up, caught a face peering at him round an ice pile.

“The Russian,” he exclaimed.

* * * * *

When the Jap girl awoke after several hours of delicious sleep in her ice palace bedroom, she looked upon a world unknown.  The sun was shining brightly.  The air was clear.  In a general way she knew the outline of East Cape and the Diomede Islands.  She knew, too, where they should be located.  It took her some time to discover them and when she did it was with a gasp of astonishment.  They were behind her.