Freddie got the idea at once and returning to the house he and Gregory put on snow shoes, collected the rifles and went back into the forest with their queer little companion. For an hour they followed the tracks, then the Lapp motioned them to halt and went forward himself for about a hundred yards on his hands and knees. After a short interval he beckoned to them to follow and, crawling up, they saw through the trees a fine brown bear.
It seemed a rotten business to shoot that harmless Bruin which was so reminiscent of a large teddy in a children's toyshop, but they had not tasted fresh meat for nearly a fortnight so, sighting their rifles carefully and aiming just behind the bear's left foreleg, they fired almost together. The animal reared up on its hind legs, gave a loud grunt and toppled over, dead.
Instantly the Lapp rushed forward brandishing a long knife and fell upon it screeching with delight. In a few moments with swift, skilful cuts he had skinned the bear and, with uncanny suddenness, his two companions appeared, leading their dogs Leigh. The carcass was loaded on to it and the triumphant hunters retraced their steps to the house, reaching it with their kill just as the short afternoon was done and twilight was falling once more. Erika roasted some of the fresh bear's meat in the oven that evening and after the dried reindeer, to which they had now become accustomed, it tasted delicious; so they all felt that their uninvited guests had more than earned their keep.
As they did not know the Lapps' names Angela christened the taller one Bimbo and the two shorter ones, who followed him about wherever he went and whose job appeared to be to look after the dogs. Mutt and Jeff. The habits of all three were extremely primitive and after their feast of bear's meat the gleeful chuckles and other sounds which issued from their corner, once the light had been put out, made it clear that at least one of them was a woman. The following day Freddie definitely ascertained that Bimbo was the man of the party while Mutt and Jeff were his two wives.
In the days that followed it became clear that the Lapps had decided to winter with them, but far from interfering with the comfort of their hosts they added considerably to it. Bimbo seemed to know instinctively where game was to be found in the trackless forest and he had not been' with them long before he added fresh fish to their table. To their amazement he arrived back from one of his expeditions late one evening carrying a large pike in his arms. It is true that most of the tail end of the fish was missing, but the girls cooked the body and it proved a most welcome change to their meat diet.
As they could not ask him where he had caught it, next morning' Freddie drew in the snow a picture of a fish, demonstrating that they would like to get another. Bimbo remained unresponsive until the early afternoon, then led them nearly three miles through the forest to a large clearing which looked at first sight to be only a great treeless dip in the snow covered ground; but on going down into it they found that it was a frozen lake in which at one spot Bimbo had cleared away the snow and hacked a hole through the ice. As twilight fell he lit a lamp that he had brought with him and lowered it on a string to the bottom of the hole, kneeling above it with a thin barbed spear clutched tightly in his hand.
For twenty minutes they waited. The surface of the water rippled and Bimbo struck. Jerking out his spear he produced a fair sized perch wriggling upon it. His little, black, boot button eyes flashing with eagerness, he tore the fish from the harpoon and, having knocked its head on the ice to stun it, proceed to tear great mouthfuls of the flesh out of its body, gobbling them down with huge enjoyment; upon which his companions realized what had happened to the tail end of the pike.
They remained there for two hours, during which they bagged a trout, another perch and three fish that Freddie thought might be fresh water herrings. It was now night and Freddie was worried that they might not be able to find their way home; but his anxiety was quite needless. Bimbo led them back through the seemingly impenetrable darkness with an unerring sense of direction and they all enjoyed an excellent fish supper.
The news over the wireless contained no events of startling importance. During the first week after the Lapps' arrival
Russia had been formally expelled from the League of Nations and Italy also ceased to be a member, leaving Britain and France as the only Great Powers remaining in it. So it had come openly at last to what, in fact, it had been for a long time past; not a League of Nations at all, but an association of states under the leadership of the Western Powers used as an instrument by them in their losing struggle to maintain by diplomacy alone the Peace of Vengeance which they had dictated after the last Great War.
It was on December the 15th that the exiles first learned of the Battle of the River Plate, although it had taken place two days before. On the face of it the British appeared to have put up an excellent show, but the full significance of the action was not brought home to them until it had been explained to Gregory what sort of ships the Graf Spee and the cruisers Ajax, Achilles and Exeter were when, quite suddenly, his memory about naval matters, gun calibres, speeds and weight of shells flooded back.
"But don't you understand:" he cried, his eyes glowing. "It's magnificent An epic fight that will go down to history beside the exploits of Drake and Frobisher, and Sir Richard Grenville taking on the seven great Spanish galleons in the Revenge. Just think of it Those little cruisers, out gunned, out ranged, and infinitely more vulnerable with their much lighter armour, going straight in against the pocket battleship instead of waiting for one of their own big ships to come up. Why, one salvo apiece from theGraf Spee's eleven inch guns might have sunk the lot of them before they could even get into range. It's the real Nelson touch, and it makes one incredibly proud to think one's of the same race as those splendid sailor men."
Freddie and. Angela caught his enthusiasm and they had all momentarily forgotten that Erika was a German, until she said: "Hans Langsdorf, who commands the Graf Spee, is an old friend of mine. He's a fine fellow, I can't bear to think of him sitting there with his crippled ship in Montevideo Harbour. But he'll come out and fight, of course, even if one of your big ships with fifteen inch guns arrives on the scene. When he has completed his repairs he'll show you that German sailors are every bit as brave as the British. I'm going for a walk on my own, I think."
They waited anxiously for further news and two days later learned that at Hitler's orders Captain Langsdorf had scuttled the pride of the German Navy. At first Erika refused to believe it but when she was fully convinced that the news was true she burst into a storm of bitter weeping. "The humiliation of it” she cried. "How dare that swine, Hitler, give such: an order and make us appear cowards before the whole world. If anything could make all decent Germans loathe him more than they do at present, this thing will. It's enough to start a mutiny."
It was all the others could do to comfort her, but as by this time Gregory had got back a few of his memories about the last war he was able to persuade her that Hitler alone would be regarded with contempt as a result of the scuttling; since everybody knew that innumerable gallant actions had been performed by German soldiers and sailors in the past. There was one particular example which he wished to give her but, rack his brain as he would, he could not recall it until he had made Freddie tell him the names of the principal battles in the Great War. When Cambrai was mentioned it unlocked the closed door that he sought and brought back to him a whole series of events.