Читать книгу By Bursting Flash Bulbs - Roy J. Snell - Страница 6

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After borrowing a pair of rubber boots for launching his boat Jimmy rowed out to the Seminole where he made a report to his uncle.

“It’s the strangest thing!” he exclaimed. “They say I’ve seen every one of those little brown men from across the sea and not one of them resembles the man I saw in Tim’s cabin. Except—” he hesitated.

“Except what?” inquired his uncle.

“That fellow I saw in the trading post loft. He wasn’t the man, a long way from it, but there was a sort of resemblance. But then,” he laughed at his own strange notions, “he was a native, not really a foreigner at all.”

“Keep on looking,” advised Captain Jack. “We shall be here two days longer, perhaps three.”

“That’s swell!” Jimmy exclaimed. “Then I can have my pupmobile ride.”

“What’s that?” His uncle stared, just as he had done.

“I’ll tell you when I find out,” the boy grinned. “I’m to have that ride with Molly Bowman.”

“Oh! It’s Molly, is it?” His uncle favored him with a wise-as-an-owl look. “Well, son, Molly’s a fine girl. I never knew anyone who seemed so to belong to this country. Dog teams, reindeer, sailboats—they’re all the same to her. You’ll like her.”

“I already do,” Jimmy admitted frankly. “But, Captain Jack,” he liked that name—“there’s a young college fellow on shore who wants to take a trip with us, says he’s looking for some thousand dollar eggs.”

“Of course,” said his uncle. “So are we all, looking for the goose that lays the golden eggs. There is one too. It’s known as Ross’s snow goose.”

“Oh!” said Timmy in some surprise. “So it’s true?”

“Certainly it is.”

“Then may he come along?” Jimmy’s tone was eager now. “We might find a nestful together. Then, ah! The grand cameras I’ll buy!”

“No harm in bringing him along,” his uncle agreed. “You explained about his paying for his eats?”

“Sure did.”

“All right, then, bring him aboard any time.”

“I’m going to Tim’s to sleep tonight,” said Jimmy. “Want to look around a little at night.”

“Short night. You’ll have to hurry,” said Captain Jack.

Ten minutes later, just as the shadows were falling on the dim-lit distant shore line of that strange mysterious little city of the great North, Jimmy found himself rowing over the dark rippling sea.

“The sea,” he thought. “How it sort of seems to haunt you! How the little waves whisper as they pass. They seem to want to tell of the past and of the men who came here to find gold and found instead an unmarked grave somewhere way back there where the North really begins.”

As his boat touched the sandy beach and he waded ashore, the wavelets were whispering still.

Jimmy had his pockets stuffed with flash bulbs. A particular kind of flashlight for shooting them hung at his belt. Dr. Cole, one of the curators of the Field Museum in Chicago, was a college mate and close friend of his father. Before leaving for the North, Jimmy had spent many hours in the museum’s display relating to Eskimo life. The doctor had asked him to get many pictures of native life as it is to be seen today. Jimmy was prepared to keep his promise.

That night the sandspit along the beach at the edge of Nome seemed to Jimmy to be a chapter taken from another age. Natives from the mainlands of Alaska and Siberia and from half a dozen islands were camped there. With the thirty-five-foot skin boats turned over them for shelter, they sat about cheerful, gleaming fires of driftwood. From one corner came the drone of an ancient victrola, and from another the Ki-yi-yi-um-ah-ah of a native song. Everywhere there was chatter and laughter.

“How happy and free they are,” Jimmy thought. He almost envied them that freedom. As he thought of his father sitting by his lamp on the screened front porch, figuring out bills and accounts, always a little worried about making both ends meet, he was wrapped in silent wonder.

“Picture?” he pointed at his camera as he came to a particularly hilarious group.

“All right,” said a dark-faced man. “You give two bits. Mebby all right.”

“Sure!” Jimmy exclaimed. “Here’s your quarter. Now. Everybody smile.” He stepped back, took a squint, held his flashlight aloft, and flash—bang—the thing was done.

“King’s Islanders?” he asked.

“No me,” said an Eskimo woman. “Uba.” She nodded down the beaten path that led past other encampments.

When he had taken one more picture and passed six more upturned boats, Jimmy came to an encampment quite remote from the others. “This,” he thought with a little tremor of mystery and excitement “must be the King’s Islanders camp. But how still and deserted it is! Must all be gone.

“No,” he thought a moment later. “There’s light coming through a crack.” Great stretches of walrus skin had been drawn down before a large skin boat, completely closing it in.

“Hi there!” he called. No answer. “Hey!” Still no answer.

“Confound ’em,” he thought. “They’re in Nome, not in their native village. They don’t need to be so secretive. Or do they? I wonder . . .”

There was very low light inside, only a seal-oil lamp, perhaps. He stepped to a broad crack and tried to peer in. He could see nothing. He fancied he heard low whispers, but could not be sure.

“I’ll fix ’em,” he whispered. Without giving the matter a second thought he set his camera, held it before the opening, thrust a flash bulb into the place and touched the button.

The results were instantaneous and terrific. There came the roar of men’s voices and the big skin boat fairly rocked as the boy dashed away. He had not gone a dozen paces in the darkness when he fell over an empty steel barrel. To his consternation, the barrel let out a roar all its own.

Just in time he remembered that these barrels were summer dog kennels. Without attempting to rise, he rolled over and over. When the savage, snapping dog chained to the barrel turned a somersault because he had come to the end of his chain, he kicked Jimmy in the face but did him no real harm.

Ten seconds later the boy was on his feet and away. But where to? He did not know this part of town. Just anywhere then. He sped on.

Was he followed? He paused at last to listen. Fancying he heard soft, padded footsteps, he once more raced away.

Coming at last to a broad road he stopped to get his breath. Bending low, that he might see any form outlined against a stretch of light sky, he looked and listened.

“No one,” he murmured. “Just my imagination.”

He started walking. Then he recognized the road. It led to Tim’s cabin. Great luck!

“Some stunt,” he murmured after a time. “Regular schoolboy trick. Like ringing door-bells and beating it.

“And yet,” he added soberly——

When he told Tim his story, the old man shook his head. “You oughtn’t to antagonize ’em,” he said.

“I guess it was a mistake shooting that picture,” Jimmy admitted. “All the same, I’d like to know what I’ve got on that film.”

Well, he wouldn’t know, not right away. Tomorrow he was to visit a reindeer herd and take a pupmobile ride with Molly. It was a great little world. With these thoughts he went off to the land of dreams. And that night no dark-faced little brown man entered Tim’s cabin.