Johnny had gone to the igloo now occupied by Iyok-ok.  He had gone, not to spy on his friend, but to talk to him about recent developments and to ascertain, if possible, when they would cross the Strait.  He had got as far as the tent flaps, had peered within for a few moments and had come away again walking as a man in his dream.

What he had seen was apparently not so startling either.  It was no more than the boy with his parka off.  But that was quite enough.  Iyok-ok was dressed in a suit of purple pajamas and was turned half about in such a manner that Johnny had seen his right shoulder.  On it was a three-cornered, jagged scar.

This scar had told the story.  The boy was not an Eskimo but a Jap masquerading as an Eskimo.  Furthermore, and this is the part which gave Johnny the start, this Jap was none other than Hanada, his schoolmate of other days; a boy to whom he owed much, perhaps his very life.

“Hanada!” he repeated again, as he turned beneath the furs.  How well he remembered that fight.  Even then—­it was his first year in a military preparatory school—­he had shown his tendencies to develop as a featherweight champion.  And this tendency had come near to ending his career.  The military school was one of those in which the higher classmen treated the beginners rough.  Johnny had resented this treatment and had been set upon by four husky lads in the darkness.  He had settled two of them, knocked them cold.  But the other two had got him down, and were beating the life out of him when this little Jap, Hanada, had appeared on the scene.  Being also a first year student, he had come in with his ju’jut’su and between them they had won the battle, but not until the Jap had been hung over a picket fence with a jagged wound in his shoulder.  It was the scar of that wound Johnny had seen and it was that scar which had told him that this must be Hanada.

He smiled now, as he thought how he had taken Hanada to his room after that boy’s battle and had attempted to sew up the cut with an ordinary needle.  He smiled grimly as he thought of the fight and how he had resolved to win or die.  Hanada had helped him win.

And here he had been traveling with the Japanese days on end and had not recognized him.  And yet it was not so strange.  He had not seen him for six years.  Had Hanada recognized him?  If he had, and Johnny found it hard to doubt it, then he had his own reasons for keeping silent.  Johnny decided that he would not be the first to break the silence.  But after all there was a strange new comfort in the realization that here was one among all these strangers whom he could trust implicitly.  And Hanada would make a capital companion with whom he might cross the thirty-five miles of drifting, piling ice which still lay between him and America.  It was the contemplation of these realities which at last led him to the land of dreams.

CHAPTER IX