“Keep ’em up.”

Roberta’s heart hammered, but she misunderstood the last part of the order, and faced about quickly.

“Say, what are you doing; I told you not to turn around!”

“I’m not,” Roberta retorted.

“You’re—say, you’re a girl!” A decidedly unkempt looking young man, with nothing more deadly in his hands than a knotted stick, came toward her quickly. “You look like Langwell, the Lurtiss kid pilot.”

“I am Roberta Langwell and I’m not a kid,” she replied indignantly as she dropped her hands.

“Sure, I saw you when you were touring206 with the Wallaces. What the— that is, I mean, what are you doing up here?” His hand went to his collar as if to adjust his tie, but there was none there, and a look of dismay spread over his bewhiskered features. “My name’s Arnold, but I’m no relation to the guy who tried to betray his country.”

“I am a prisoner, Mr. Arnold,” she told him.

“You look it. Tell me another,” he answered.

“Just the same, that’s the truth,” she replied, and then, as there was a stump handy, she sat down. “Please don’t let me keep you standing. Are we in the Bering Sea?” Arnold sat down with a chuckle.

“The island is,” he told her.

“What islands are they, I mean, what are their names?”

“Don’t believe these have any because they are not very large, but they belong to the Pribilof group. I believe this is the farthest north and it’s a bit over three hundred miles to Alaska.”

“Thanks,” she said with a sigh. “It’s mighty nice to know where one is at. I was207 piloting for a woman called Pollzoff; and she fed me some kind of dope that knocked me out, then tied me up like a chicken ready to roast, and brought me to an island below here.”

“Pollzoff?”

“Yes.”

“Go on and tell me the rest.” There was no doubt in his tone or manner now.

“Guess I’m what is called kidnaped,” Roberta began, then told him quickly all that had happened to her right up to that moment.

“You certainly have been having a terrible time,” he remarked soberly. “What was that spring thing in your plane?”

“It’s an invention of Mr. Wallace’s and I really cannot tell much about it except that it’s tuned with the radio stations’ broadcasting band and when it is open, if the signal is investigated, Nike can be located.”

“That’s rich! And Pollzoff went off in your plane; flying right into the arms of the police looking for you. Wish I could see the performance.”

“I don’t believe she will do anything so208 stupid as fly into anyone’s arms, but just the same, they can find out where Nike goes, that is, if the thing works. Now, tell me, what are you doing here?”

“Sort of a prisoner myself,” he answered.

“Oh, did somebody catch you?”

“In a way, yes. I was one of the war air-kids, and after that didn’t want to do anything but fly, but the woods were full of fellows trying to do the same thing and the jobs were almost as few and far apart as hen’s teeth. Well, I grubbed around like a ground-hog at a desk I finally landed until I saved enough money to buy a plane.”

“Yes,” Roberta was intensely interested.

“That was before Col. Lindbergh made the air a place for Americans to fly in and while I hopped about, here, there and several other places I wasn’t exactly a bright and shining success. Then one day I answered an advertisement I read in a middle west paper and took off on a job that seemed too good to be true. As they told me I would be working for a chain of business firms, I swallowed it hook, line and sinker, with the pole and reel thrown in, and didn’t think209 anything of it when I carried males and females all over the map. I figured they were members of boards, big business stuff with headquarters scattered.” He paused again and frowned.

“I see,” the girl encouraged.

“I’d been with them a year, and had a real roll in the bank before I made my first trip to Alaska with any of them. It was six months after that before I went over to the Pribilof Islands—”

“Is that where we are?”

“Yes, but not the main ones. They are a bit further south, but these little fellows I guess are all on the same range, like an underseas chain of mountains,” he answered, then went on. “I carried mail, supplies and stuff back and forth between them and the mainland, sometimes down to the Aleutian Islands. The Indian woman you call Nomie is an Aleut.”

“I wondered.”

“That’s what she is. Her husband was a seal fisher and got killed when the kid was little. They had the dugout and lived where you’re being held so she stayed and worked210 for the gang, she nurses them when they get sick, and all that sort of thing.”

“She’s been mighty nice to me,” Roberta said quickly.

“She’s a darned good Indian and she had to make her living somehow, same as a lot of the rest of us.”

“Of course,” Roberta agreed.

“At first I hopped on Nomie’s island and hopped off again within an hour. Sometimes I took a bale of furs that I thought the other Indians had left there to be sold in the States or Canada. Gee—this story is stretching out and we gotta remember that tide.”

“It was going down,” Roberta told him.

“Yes, I know it. Well then I began to make longer stops and carry bigger loads, and after a while I happened to pick up a magazine with an article and pictures of the Pribilofs. It told about the seal fishing, how there used to be thousands of the beasts killed every year even at mating time. The United States bought the islands from Russia along with Alaska in 1867 and made laws to prevent the seals being exterminated. Before the war, 1911 I think it was, the211 United States, Japan, Great Britain and Russia made a treaty agreeing that the white men were not to do any more seal slaughtering. The Indians, because they don’t do it in such wholesale lots and because it means the only means of living to a great many of them, are the only people who can kill the migrating seals. They have to do it in canoes with spears or harpoons, can’t use guns or motor boats. It was a mighty interesting article, told how the seals start up in pairs from all over the country to raise their young ones.”

“Why sure, there’s a wonderful story Rudyard Kipling wrote called The White Seal. My mother read it to me when I was a kid, and I always loved it. The White Seal went to an Island called St. Paul’s.”

“That’s it. I liked that story too. Well, I knew radio as well as flying, so by and by I had to relieve the regular chap at that.”

“I’ve wondered if they have a radio.”

“They have, but it isn’t much of one. It’s just used for signals. While I was doing that I discovered that when the seals came up in April and all through the summer, a212 bunch of them were run through a sort of pen and killed. There aren’t as many of them coming up now as there used to be but the gang goes after them any old way and slaughters two hundred times more than the Indians bring in every season. It was while I was there that Wat was put in charge. I figured he was in the same boat with me; that he had been working for them for a long time before they let him get hep to what was going on, then they’d sunk him so deep he couldn’t do anything but hang on; besides he’s got a kid sister in Saranac trying to get a permanent T. B. cure and that costs a lot of money. I know because he asked me to drop down there one time and pay the bill—it was some bill, and I saw the kid, she’s only about thirteen years old.”

“That’s too bad,” Roberta said.

“Sure. Well, I’m free, white, and twenty-one, and when I figured I was signed up with a bunch of crooks I made up my mind to quit. I got a full-sized fondness for my Uncle Sam, been batting about other countries a lot, so while I don’t think the United States hasn’t room for improvement, it suits213 me right down to the ground, and I haven’t any hankering to end my brilliant career in a Federal prison while the guy I work for stays hidden and lets me hold the bag. First I thought Pollzoff was the head of the thing, then I heard Wat tell her where to get off at a couple of times for not obeying orders, but she’s got some money invested in the business so does somewhat as she pleases.”

“I wish she hadn’t picked on me,” Roberta said ruefully.

“She got everlastingly sore when she could not get a license, and I figure, from what you say, that while she was flying around with you, she got jealous because you landed what she couldn’t. When a woman of her type gets jealous, she’s deadlier than a whole herd of males. Probably they planned to get you to work for them as a sort of blind, but she couldn’t wait, and shoved the works hard. Anyway, when I made up my mind to quit, I knew I had to do it mighty carefully. I wasn’t leaving Nomie’s very often then and it wasn’t easy, but finally one day I started off in the plane, that was about six weeks ago, but they must have been wise. Wat214 wasn’t there that day and the fellow in charge had the machine gun turned on me before I could get very high. The shot ripped off my tail but I gave the bus the gas and went on just the same. Couldn’t do a very good job of steering, and it was foggy, so this is as far as I got. Now, you know all about me.” He stared ahead with a scowl.

“My goodness, how have you managed to live? Were you hurt when you came down?”

“Hurt some, sure, but not bad. Got a crack on my head that seems to have affected my eyes. Then I discovered a vessel wrecked off the other side and managed to salvage her stores. Hunted for some of the............