"See that cliff?" asked Iyok-ok. "Plenty of gold there. Pick it out with
your pen knife. Rich! Too rich."

"Then this Peninsula is as rich as Alaska?"

"Alaska?" Iyok-ok grinned. "Alaska? What shall I say? Alaska, it is a
joke. Think of the great Lena River! Great as the Yukon. Who knows what
gold is deposited in the beds and banks of that mighty stream? Who knows
anything about this wonderful peninsula? The Czar, he has kept it
locked. But now the Czar is dead. The key is lost. Who will find it?
Sometime we will see."

The boy was interrupted by wild shouts coming from the village. As their
eyes turned in that direction, Johnny and Iyok-ok beheld a strange
sight. The entire village had apparently turned out to give chase to one
man. And, down to the last child, they were armed. But such strange
implements of warfare as they carried! All were relics of by-gone days;
lances, walrus harpoons, bows and arrows, axes, hammers and many more.

As Johnny watched them, he remembered having been told by an old native
that during and after the great war these people had been unable to
procure a sufficient supply of ammunition and had been obliged to resort
to ancient methods of hunting. These were the bow and arrow, the lance
and the harpoon. Powerful bows, of some native wood, shot arrows tipped
with cunningly tempered bits of steel. The drawn and tempered barrel of
a discarded rifle formed a point for the long-shafted lance. The
harpoon, most terrible of all weapons, both for man and beast, was a
long wooden shaft with a loose point attached to a long skin rope. Once
five or six of these had been thrown into the body of a great white bear
or some offending human he was doomed to die a death of agonizing