"070 (B079) - The Devil Genghis (1938-12) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

THE DEVIL GENGHIS

A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson



Chapter I

A MYSTERY MOVING SOUTH

It was too bad the dog could not talk.

The dog came yelping and kiyoodling across the ice at a dead run. It was an Eskimo dog. The dog stopped in front of an igloo and had a fit.

The dog seemed to be trying to bite something in the air above it. It kept jumping up and snapping its teeth. For hours it just sprang high and snapped its jaws.

The Eskimos stood around and wondered what on earth.

Or maybe it would not have helped if the dog could talk.

The Eskimo could talk. It didn't help in his case.

The Eskimo was a hunter named Kummik. He could speak the Eskimo language, and he could also say, "Hello, baby, how about a nice juicy kiss?" just as plain as anything.

An explorer with a certain variety of humor had taught him that, and told him it was the proper way to greet a white man. Kummik could also say, "By Jiminy, you're big and fat and as ugly as a mud fence!" The explorer had taught Kummik those words, also, and advised him they were the correct greeting for a white woman.

This Eskimo named Kummik went out hunting on the arctic ice.

It was not particularly cold. A white man, an inhabitant of Missouri, for example, would have thought it was pretty chilly; but in the estimation of the Eskimos, it was just good hunting weather. Only about fifteen below zero. It was cloudy and rather dark, for the six-months-long winter had begun. The wind, which was getting a running start up around the North Pole somewhere, blew hard and scooped up much snow and drove it along in stinging, stifling clouds, so that the effect was something like a western Kansas dust storm. Except that this was snow.

The Eskimo came back as naked as the day he was born.

He still had his spear.

if he had just been naked, and carrying a spear, tile other Eskimos would not have been particularly shocked, although they might have done some wondering. These Eskimos lived farther north than any others, So no one bothered them, except a genuine explorer now and then - but only genuine explorers.

The drawing-room explorers never got this far, not only because it was a long way north, but because this spot in the arctic was surrounded by some very tough traveling. At any rate, the Eskimos had escaped the white man; so they had escaped modesty.

Hence the Eskimos did not have any modesty to be shocked when their fellow citizen named Kummik came galloping back to the igloo village without a stitch of clothes - rather, without a hair of clothes, since his garments had been made of furs.

There was plenty else to shock them.


THE spear Kummik carried was the short type of hunting spear called an oonapik. It was made up of a wood shaft - wood was very valuable here in the ice wastes - and a point of bone, which was not so valuable. The spear was used to harpoon ogiuk, the seal, was employed to stick nanook, the bear; and occasionally, it was used to give little innukr, the kids, a few chastising whacks.

Kummik was using his spear to jab, stab and belabor the air over his head.

Now Kummik had always been a sennayo. A sennayo is a good worker, a family man, an excellent provider. A sennayo is the equivalent of a good Missouri farmer who is on the school board. And Kummik was a sennayo.

It was unusual for a fellow like Kummik to be stabbing at the air over his head with a spear.