Several of them turned to run again; but the officer gave a sharp order which halted. the men, and they all stood there jabbering excitedly for several moments before plucking up the courage to advance. In wonder and fear they approached the witches' circle, those behind pushing forward the ones in front. For a time they stood staring at the malignant looking beast, but none of them had the courage to cross the trodden track where they obviously thought that snow demons had danced the night before. Then they split up into little groups and began to collect their broken, scattered belongings.
The officer and two of the men walked resolutely over to the house. Angela gave them a couple of minutes to take in the overturned furniture and the equipment which had been strewn about then she signalled to Freddie. He pulled hard on one of the wires and in the deep stillness of the forest they heard quite clearly the crash that followed.
With yells of fright the officer and his men came bounding out of the door and it was a good five minutes before they mustered the pluck to go in again. Angela signalled. Freddie pulled another wire. There was another crash; and out came the frightened men again as though an enraged lion were after them. This time they made no further attempt to enter the house but, getting a long pole, proceeded to fish the officer's belongings out of the room, through the open doorway, without crossing the accursed threshold.
When they had rescued the things from the poltergeist's lair the officer gave a shout and his half frozen men came straggling towards him through the snow. He addressed them for a few moments then, apparently inspired by some new impetus, they scattered and quickly began to load up their six lorries.
Angela's stratagem had succeeded and her victory was complete. Three quarters of an hour later, except for a little scattered rubbish, there was not a trace of the Russians in the clearing. Bag and baggage they had moved on further north to form a new camp in a more congenial atmosphere; and it was a safe bet that they would not select a place within several miles of that devil ridden spot.
Freddie brought the horses and sleigh back and after clearing up the smashed crockery they were able to settle down in their refuge as though they had never been driven out of it. Nevertheless, after their midday meal Freddie and Gregory went out and felled two tall trees on either side of the track so that they fell across it. Then they cut the lower branches from
many others and fixed these firmly among the boughs of the fallen trees; thereby forming a screen which would prevent any other troops that passed along the road seeing the house from it even in daylight.
That night they were able to get the news over the wireless again and from an English commentary on the past week's events by a neutral learned of the terrible earthquake in Turkey which was said to have killed 20,000 people and to have wrecked a score of towns and hundreds of villages, many of which were still in flames; while their unfortunate inhabitants who had survived the quake were suffering acutely from having to camp out in the Anatolian snows. Two German cruisers had been sunk by British submarines right in the mouth of the Elbe another splendid feat of naval daring and the first Canadian troops had arrived in England without a single casualty.
Nearer home the Soviet Generals had been hurling division after division of their troops against the Mannerheim Line in a new offensive. It was reported that the Russians were ill equipped, ill led, and abysmally ignorant creatures who had not the least idea what the war they were waging was about. Many hundreds of them among the thousands of prisoners taken said that they had never even heard of Finland, that they fought only because they were ordered to, and that Communist Party members drove them on to the Finnish lines by keeping machine guns trained upon their backs. Yet that did not affect the fact of their overwhelming superiority in numbers in spite of which the Finns had broken every attack, and the great offensive was said to be weakening.
No trace of Bimbo and his wives, Mutt and Jeff, had been seen since they had taken refuge in the forest with the rest of the party on the arrival of the Russians. They had stood near that evening watching the preparations for the first ghost attack; but it had been impossible to explain to them what was being planned and their intelligence, apart from matters pertaining to the wild life of the woods, was of such a low standard that they evidently had not associated the making of the catapults and the cutting of the devil masks with the dancing lights and horrid screaming later in the evening; and so had beer, just as terrified as the soldiers. In any case, they had disappeared into the great forest as unexpectedly as they had come out of it and the party at the trapper's house never saw them again.
Yet their fortnight's stay had proved an invaluable blessing for, during it, they had taught their hosts their method of fishing and how to recognize the spoor of certain animals bear, reindeer, wolf, lynx, hare and fox, several of which were fit for human consumption. After the Lapps' departure Freddie and Gregory used to go out most days on their own and often brought back some animal or fresh fish, the supply of which from the frozen lake appeared quite inexhaustible.
Among the trapper's stores there were few luxuries but such as there were had been set aside for special occasions; so on Christmas Day they were able to have a gala dinner although not a single course of it was in any way similar to the fare they would have had at home. They felt confident that the King would be making a personal broadcast, as usuaclass="underline" so, remembering that such broadcasts took place at about three o'clock, Greenwich "mean time", and knowing their own longitude to be roughly 30° West, Freddie began to tune in at a few minutes before four. With bent heads they sat round the radio, listening intently. After a little while they heard a faint, indistinct mutter, not a word of which could they catch, but it went on for about ten minutes and they felt certain that it had been the King of England speaking to the people of his Empire and all those of British race and sympathies who were scattered over the five continents and the seven seas, which filled the English members of the party with a strange satisfaction.
For the rest of the evening they got dance music from nearer stations and amused themselves with a Christmas tree which Erika had dressed with some of the store of candles, cut into small pieces, and hung with presents. Their gifts to one another were little things that they had made in secret during the past week and brought all the more joy to their recipients in that they were the product of time and thought instead of easily made purchases.
By December the 30th, when Finland had been at war for a month, not only was the Mannerheim Line still intact, as Loumkoski had said it would be, but a Finnish Suicide Squad of two hundred and fifty ace skiers had penetrated into Russia and cut the Leningrad Murmansk Railway; which magnificent achievement was immediately followed by a smashing Finnish victory on the Suomussalmi front where two more divisions of Soviet troops had been surrounded and cut to pieces.
Over Christmas they had used the wireless extravagantly and by New Year's Eve they found to their distress that it was growing fainter. Even the nearest stations became difficult to pick up, so they decided to conserve it as much as possible by only listening to the news twice a week. Yet by January the 6th it had faded out entirely. The batteries were dead and although they had searched through all the stores they had failed to find any replacements.