CHAPTER XII

"GET THAT MAN"

The trip from Cape Prince of Wales to Nome was fraught with many
dangers. Already the spring thaw had begun. Had not the Eskimo whom
Johnny employed to take him to the Arctic metropolis with his dog team
been a marvel at skirting rotten ice and water holes in Port Clarence
Bay, at swimming the floods on Tissure River, and at canoeing across the
flooded Sinrock, Johnny might never have reached his journey's end.

As it was, two weeks from the time he left East Cape in Siberia, he
stood on the sand spit at Nome, Alaska. By his side stood Hanada, who
was still acting the part of an Eskimo and who had come down a few days
ahead of him.

They were viewing a rare sight, the passing out to sea of the two miles
of shore ice. The spring thaw had been followed by an off-shore wind
which was carrying the loosened ice away. Johnny's interest was evenly
divided between this rare spectacle and the recollection of the events
that had recently transpired.

"Look!" said Hanada. "I believe the ice will carry the farther end of
the cable tramway out to sea."

Johnny looked. It did seem that what the boy said was true. Already the
cable appeared to be as tight as a fiddle string.

The tramway was a cable which stretched from a wooden tower set upon a
stone pillar jutting from the sea to a similar tower built upon the
land. This tramway, during the busy summer months of open sea, is used
in lieu of a harbor and docks to bring freight and passengers ashore.
This is done by drawing a swinging platform over the cable from tower to
tower and back again. The platform at the present moment swung idly at
the shore end of the cable. The beach had been fast locked in ice for
eight months and more.

"Looks like it might go," said Johnny absentmindedly.

Neither he nor the Jap had seen or heard anything of the Russian. Two
things would seem to indicate that that mysterious fugitive was in town;
three times Johnny had found himself being closely watched by certain
rough-looking Russian laborers, and once he had narrowly averted being
attacked in a dark street at night by a gang of the same general
character.

Hanada had not yet chosen to reveal his identity, and Johnny had not
questioned him.

Only the day before a placard in the post office had given him a start.
It was an advertisement offering a thousand dollars reward for knowledge
which would lead to the arrest of a certain Russian Radical of much
i