The flat topped stove, a feature of all Arctic dwellings, consisting of cooking range and brick baking oven in this case a huge affair nearly ten feet square was still going. But owing to the fact that the door of the house had been left partly open for several hours, the room was little warmer than the climate outside; and as Freddie examined the bodies he found that they were already frozen stiff. Going out to the two girls he told them what he had found and asked them to remain where then were while he disposed of the corpses. He then returned to the cottage and one by one carried the poor dead Finns from their home to deposit them round the corner of the building, since he was far too done up to think of burying them before he had slept.
While Freddie was busy with the bodies Angela took the torch and scouted round the house until she found a large stable in its rear. There were no horses there but one end of it was piled high with roughly made trusses of sweet smelling hay, and as the place backed on to One stove in the living room its temperature was not unbearably cola. Stumbling with weariness she went back to the sleigh, unharnessed the horses, rugged them up and turned them loose in the stable to munch mouthfuls of hay from the trusses.
Erika had meanwhile roused Gregory and found to her joy that he was now able to walk Without assistance; but he complained that he had a most frightful headache and that it hurt him to talk. She led him into the house and made him sit down in an arm chair where she brushed the frost from his eye brows and chafed his half frozen hands and feet.
By the time they had finished protecting the room from the cold and had warmed themselves at the stove they could hardly stand from fatigue. Since morning they had sustained eighteen hours of almost constant anxiety and exertion and they felt much too tired even to look round the cottage in search of food. Having stoked up the stove they climbed wearily on top of the oven and drew their furs over them; Freddie put out the light and within ten minutes all four of them were sound asleep.
When Freddie awoke it was still pitch dark and on looking at the luminous dial of his watch he saw that it was a quarter to three. Knowing that it must have been just about that hour when they turned in he jumped to the conclusion that they must have slept the clock round twice, but it seemed rather extraordinary that all of them should have done so, even allowing for the terrific strain of the previous day. Then the explanation flashed upon him. Up here in the Arctic, now that it was close on mid winter, the sun did not rise until ten o'clock and it would set again soon after two. They had slept once round the clock but the short four hour day was already over; although they were encompassed again in pitch black night it was actually only a quarter to three in the afternoon.
His stirring had roused the others and while he lit the lamp they climbed down off the big, flat top of the oven. Erika's first concern was for Gregory but when she asked him how his head was he looked at her in a puzzled way.
"My head? Yes; it's aching like blazes. I-I wonder why?"
"You were hit on the back of it last night by a spent bullet and passed out. You gave us the most awful shock. We thought you were dead."
He smiled at her. "That's strange. I don't remember the least thing about it and er " he looked round the big living room, "where the devil are we?"
"In some woodman's or trapper's home that we were lucky enough to find about forty or fifty miles south east by south of Petsamo," said Freddie.
"Petsamo?" Gregory murmured vaguely. "Petsamo? Where's that?"
"Wake up, man 1 " Freddie laughed. "It's the Finnish port in the Arctic Circle."
A look dawned in Gregory's eyes that none of them had ever seen there before; a frightened, hunted look. "But, but " he stammered, "the Arctic! What am I doing up in the Arctic?"
They all stood there in silence for a moment regarding him anxiously until, in a very small voice, Erika said suddenly: "You do know me, darling, don't you?"
"Of course I do," he laughed uneasily. "As though I .could forget your lovely face in a million years But wait a minute that’s very queer .l can't remember your name."
"I'm Erika," she said softly.
"Erika," lie repeated. "That's a pretty name, isn't it and marvellously suitable." He looked at the others. "Of course I know both of you, too, but somehow it's quite extraordinary I can't place either of you for the moment."
"I'm Freddie, and this is Angela," Charlton announced. "it looks as though that crack on the back of your head last night has caused you to lose your memory, old chap," he added with a worried frown.
Gregory passed a hand across his forehead and nodded slowly. Then he laughed rather uncertainly. "Yes, I suppose that's it. What a damnable thing, to happen My mind seems to have gone completely blank. I-I haven't the faintest idea who I am or what we're all doing here."
It was a strange and rather alarming situation but the practical Angela pulled them out of the sudden gloom that had descended upon them, by saying: "I expect when we tell you all we know about your past things'll soon come back. In the meantime I'm jolly hungry. What about seeing if we can find some breakfast?"
"That's the idea," Freddie supported her, and the two of them began to poke into the cupboards to see what supplies they could find while Erika examined Gregory's wound. The bullet had cut a furrow about two inches long through the hair at the back of his cranium, exposing a jagged red weal where the torn scalp had bled. He felt no pain from the wound itself; the whole area had gone dull so that he could not feel anything even when Erika pressed quite hard with her fingers, so she washed it carefully and left it unbandaged so that the air could get at the abrasion and heal it more quickly.
In a cupboard near the stove Angela had found a small stock of coffee, sugar, tinned milk, some slices of dried meat on a plate and two flat loaves like small, thick motor tyres. Erika said that as it was too cold to grow wheat in Finland white bread was procurable only in the towns, where it was made from stocks of imported corn, and that this was rye bread upon which the bulk of the population lived. She had often seen the peasant women carrying a dozen or more such loaves by a string threaded through the holes in the centre, and had heard it said that they went as hard as brick when they were stale but kept almost indefinitely, and that the people made great stocks of them in the autumn to last through the winter.
Angela made some coffee and breaking up a part of one of the brick like loaves they soaked the pieces in it to soften them; which, with the cold meat, made a not particularly palatable but satisfying meal. Over it they gave Gregory particulars as to who he was and a rough outline of his doings as far as they knew them since Erika had first met him on the road between Coblenz and Cologne three months before.
He was naturally extraordinarily interested in this recital but at certain parts of it they had great difficulty in persuading him that they were telling the truth. At first he refused to believe that he was a secret agent and said that such an incredible series of adventures could never have happened to anyone in real life; but he had to admit that they could hardly have invented such a story on the spur of the moment. He seemed to take everything in but he said very little and they were greatly distressed to see that his loss of memory had robbed him of his mental agility to such an extent that he was almost a different personality.
While rummaging for food they had pulled open a low door beside the stove which led into a small lightless chamber that had a drain in the centre of its sloping concrete floor and was empty except for a pile of large stones. Erika said that it was a Soma, or Finnish steam bath, and that to use it the stores should first be heated in the fire then have buckets of cold water poured over them which created clouds of steam in the small, almost airtight chamber making it like the steam room in a Turkish Bath.