Panther Eye. Roy J. Snell

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“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest, Yo—ho—ho, and a bottle of rum. Fifteen men and the dark and damp, My men ’tis better to shun.”

      For the fiftieth time Johnny heard those words ground out by the record that had rolled down the hill to meet him. Fifty times he had searched in vain for its meaning. For that it was not chance that had sent it rolling to his feet, but purpose, the mysterious purpose of an unknown some one, he was certain.

      If the man had something to say to him, why did he not say it? Why veil his meaning in an apparently senseless song? It was getting on his nerves.

      He sprang to his feet and began pacing the floor. For the first time since the record came into his hands, he had an idea. Somewhere, he had read part of that song, perhaps all. But where? He could not think.

      He came to a stand beside Dave Tower, who was reading.

      “Dave,” he exclaimed, “part of that song, or all of it, is printed in a book. What book is it?”

      “Your memory’s poor,” grinned Dave, “ ‘Treasure Island,’ of course—only the first two lines, though. It’s the song the old one-legged pirate used to sing.”

      “Sure,” smiled Johnny.

      Turning, he left the room.

      In a moment he had his parka down over his head and was out in the open air. He wanted to think.

      The yellow light of the moon was cut here and there by dark purple shadows of the night. Not a breath stirred. He walked slowly up the hill, watching the golden streamers of the northern lights streaking across the sky. It was a perfect night. And yet, it was to be marred all too soon.

“Fifteen men and the dark and damp, My men ’tis better to shun.”

      Johnny repeated the last two lines of the song. So these were the words the mysterious singer had improvised to sing with those which were well known by every live American boy. What could he mean? Why had he sung them?

      Suddenly it all seemed clear to him; the man was being watched and dared not do a thing openly. He wished to send them a warning. This was his only way. And the warning was doubtless to tell them to stay away from the death trap where Frank Langlois had perished.

      “Well,” Johnny exclaimed, as if addressing the person who had sent the message, “if that’s all there is to it, we’ve already complied with your wish.”

      He turned and looked back down the hill. A few hundred yards away a hole yawned in the hard crusted snow. Twenty yards from this was a cone of black earth twice the height of a man. This was their pile of pay dirt. For five days now, they had been working on the second mine of the seven. The pay dirt they had struck was not as rich as they hoped to find, but it would repay the labor of sluicing. It was growing richer each hour. They hoped in time to uncover the mother-lode. This would pay for panning and yield a rich reward.

      It was placer mining. Beside the mine entrance stood a steam thawer, a coal-heated boiler such as is used for driving a sawmill or grist-mill engine. From this a wire-wound hose extended into the interior of the mine. The mine was fifteen feet underground, but even here the earth was frozen solid. Attached to the hose was a sharp pointed iron pipe. This pipe was perforated in hundreds of places. When it was driven into the earth and the steam turned on, it thawed the flinty soil and rendered it pliable to the pick and shovel.

      “Yes,” Johnny heaved a sigh of satisfaction, “yes, sometime, perhaps in two or three months, we will send by reliable reindeer carriers our first gift of gold to the orphans of Russia.”

      He made his way up the hill to the point where he had found the phonographic record, for he was curious to know the lay of the land above that point. He wanted to know where this strange person had been hiding when he set the disk rolling.

      “It’s strange, mighty strange,” he whispered, as he looked up at the cliffs which towered skyward some three hundred yards above the spot where he stood.

      Then suddenly he stopped short. Had he seen a dark shadow flit from one little ridge to another? The surface of the hill was very uneven. He could not tell.

      At first he was inclined to turn back. But he had started for the rocky cliff and he was not given to turning back. He went on.

      As he moved forward, his thoughts were again of that strange fellow who had made the record on the disk.

      “Couldn’t be a native” he murmured. “No native has a voice like that. If it’s a strange white man, why doesn’t he join us? Perhaps—” He stopped short in his tracks. “Perhaps it’s one of our own number. Perhaps it’s Pant. He’s queer enough to do or be anything.”

      His mind hung on that last word—anything. Yes, he might not be a man at all. Might be a girl. Why always that hood drawn tight? Why the goggles? And, being a girl, she might be more than an adventuress. Possibly she was a radical, a Russian spy, who had joined his crew to thwart his purposes. Who could tell?

      “Humph!” he shook himself free from these reflections. “Lot of chance of all that being true. There’s witchery in this moonlight. And yet, stranger things have happened. Whatever you say, Pant’s a devil. Who else could see in the dark?”

      He was standing almost directly beneath the rocky cliff. Suddenly with the quickness of thought, a small brown figure sprang at him. Then another and another.

      Right at his face sprang the first one. Not one nor two of these could be too quick for Johnny. Like a shot his right arm curved out. With a screaming shudder the man leaped in air and went crashing down the hill. The second, seized by his fragile squirrel-skin parka, tore himself away. The third landed upon Johnny’s back. Like an infuriated bucking bronco, Johnny went over on his back, crushing the wind out of the fellow on the hard packed snow. But the second man, dressed now in a garment of crimson hue, which he had worn under his parka, was upon Johnny’s chest. His arm was entwined in Johnny’s left in a jujutsu hold. His hand flashed to the white boy’s chin. With such a hold even a small man could do much. The man pinioned beneath, having regained his breath, added his strength to the other in holding his adversary flat to the snow. Johnny dug his left elbow into this one’s face, while his right arm turned beneath the arm of the man on his chest and reached a position of half-nelson behind the man’s head. He was now in a position to break this assailant’s neck. Bones snapped as he applied the terrific muscles of his right arm and the brown man’s muscles relaxed. Johnny’s head and arms were free. With the speed of a wild-cat, he sprang to his feet, faced about, then, with a bounding leap, cleared the remaining assailant and went tobogganing down the hill. He had seen five others of the brown villains approaching. He had had enough for this night—more than enough.

      The snow was hard packed; the descent for many yards was steep, and Johnny gained a momentum in his downward plunge that threatened disaster. Now he careened over a low ridge to shoot downward over a succession of rolling terraces. Now he slid along the trough of a bank of snow. One thought was comforting; he was escaping from those strange brown men. Shots had rung out. Bullets whizzed past him, one fairly burning his cheek. It was with a distinct sense of relief that he at last bumped over a sheer drop of six feet to a gentler incline where he was quite out of their sight.

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