Marian hesitated. She had come to the end of a blind alley. Should she tell him of her experience with the miner who demanded the blue envelope, and of her suspicion that this man at East Cape was that same man?

She looked into his frank blue eyes for a moment, then said to herself, "Yes, I will."

She did tell him the whole story. When she had finished, there was a new, a very friendly light in the boy's eyes.

"I say," he exclaimed, "That was bully good of you. It really was. That man—"

He hesitated. Marian thought she was going to be told the whole secret of the blue envelope.

"That man," he repeated, "he won't hurt you. You need have no fear of him. As for yours truly, meaning me, I can take care of myself. We start for East Cape today. What say?"

"All right."

Marian sprang to her feet, and, after imparting the news to Lucile, who had by this time fully recovered from the shock of the previous day, set to work packing their sled for the journey.

All the time she was packing her mind was working. She had meant to discuss the mysterious disappearance of the blue envelope with the college boy. Even as she thought of this, there flashed through her mind the question, "Why is he so cheerful now? Why so anxious to get across the Straits?"

One explanation alone came to her. He had deceived them. The envelope was secure in his possession. It had imparted to him news of great importance. He was eager to cross the Straits and put its instructions into execution. What these instructions might be, she could not tell. The North was a place of rare furs, ivory and much gold. Anything was possible.

"No," she almost exploded between tight-set teeth, "no, I won't talk it over with him, I won't."

One thing, however, she did do. Under pretense of missing some article from her wardrobe when on the beach ready to start for East Cape, she hastened to the cabin on the beach, and executed a quick search for the missing envelope. The search was unrewarded.

One thing, though, arrested her attention for a moment. As she left the cabin she noticed, near the door, the print of a man's skin-boot in the snow. It was an exceedingly large print; such as is made by a careless white man who buys the first badly-made skin-boots offered to him by a native seamstress. The college boy could not have made that track. His skin-boots had been made by some Eskimo woman of no mean ability. She had fitted them to his high-arched and shapely feet, as she might have done had he been her Eskimo husband.

"Oh, well," she exclaimed, as she raced to join her companions, "probably some native who has passed this way."

Even as she said it, she doubted her own judgment. She had never in her life seen a native wear such a clumsy and badly-shaped skin-boot.



CHAPTER VIII

THE VISIT TO THE CHUKCHES

It was with a feeling of strange misgiving that Marian found herself on the evening of the day they left the wreck entering the native village of East Cape. Questions continually presented themselves to her mind. What of the bearded stranger? Was he the miner who had demanded the blue envelope? If it were he; if he appeared and once more demanded the letter, what should she say? For any proof ever presented to her, he might be the rightful owner, the real Phi Beta Ki. What could she say to him? And the natives? Had they heard of the misfortunes of the people of Whaling? Would they, too, allow superstitious fear to overcome them? Would they drive the white girls from their midst?

This last problem did not trouble her greatly, however. They would find a guide at once and begin their great adventure of crossing from the Old World to the New on the ice-floe.

An interpreter was not hard to find. Many of the men had sailed on American whalers. They were told by one of these that there was but one man in all the village who ever attempted the dangerous passage of Bering Straits. His name was O-bo-gok.

O-bo-gok was found sitting cross-legged on the sloping floor of his skin-igloo, adjusting a new point to his harpoon.

"You tell him," said the smiling college boy, "that we want to go to Cape Prince of Wales. Can he go tomorrow?"

The interpreter threw up his hands in surprise, but eventually delivered his message.

The guide, a swarthy fellow, with shaggy, drooping moustache and a powerful frame, did not look up from his work. He merely grunted.

"He say, that one, no can do," smiled the interpreter.

The college boy was not disturbed. He jingled something in his hand. Marian, who stood beside him, saw that he held three double eagles. She smiled, for she knew that even here the value of yellow disks marked with those strange pictures which Uncle Sam imprints upon them was known.

The man, dropping his harpoon, began to talk rapidly. He waved his hands. He bobbed his head. At last he arose, sprang from the sleeping compartment and began to walk the space before the open fire. He was still talking. It seemed as if he would never run down.

When at last he had finished and had thrown himself once more upon the floor of the sleeping-room, the interpreter began:

"He say, that one, he say, 'Wanna go Cape Prince Wales two month, three month, all right, maybe. Go now? Not go.' He say, that one, 'Wanna go now; never come back.' He say, that one, 'Two, three, four days come ice. Not plenty ice,' say that one. 'Some water, some ice. See water. Too much water. Wanna cross. No cross. Quick starve. Quick freeze.'

"'He say, that one, 'Tide crack spirit all-a-time lift ice, push ice this way, that way. Wanna kill man. No can go.'

"He say, that one, 'Great dead whale spirit wanna lift ice, wanna throw ice this way, that way, all way. Wanna kill man. Man no go Cape Prince Wales.'

"He say, that one, 'Wanna go Cape Prince Wales, mebby two month, mebby three month. Mebby can do. Can't tell,' he say, that one."

The college boy smiled a grim smile and pocketed his gold.

"Which all means," he said, "that the ice is not sufficiently compact, not well enough frozen together for the old boy to risk a passage, and that we'll be obliged to wait until he thinks it's O. K. Probably two or three months. Meanwhile, welcome to our village! Make yourselves at home!" He threw back his shoulders and laughed a boyish laugh.

"Oh!" exclaimed Marian, ready to indulge in a childish bit of weeping.

"Yes," smiled the boy, "but think of the sketches you'll have time to make."

"No canvas," she groaned.

"That's easy. Use squares of this sealskin the women tan white for making slippers."

"The very thing!" exclaimed Marian. She was away at once in search of some of this new style canvas, in her eagerness to be at work on some winter sketches of these most interesting people, quite forgetting the peril of natives, the danger of the food supply giving out, the probability of an unpleasant meeting with the bearded stranger.

Lucile, always of a more practical frame of mind, at once attacked the knotty problem of securing comfort and food for her little party. The question of a warm shelter during these months of sweeping winds and biting frost was solved for them by the aged chief Nepos-sok. He furnished them with a winter igloo. An interesting type of home they found it and one offering great comfort. An outer covering of walrus skin was supported by tall poles set in a semicircle and meeting at the top. The inside of this tepee-like structure was lined with a great circling robe of long-haired deerskin. The hair on these winter skins was two inches long and matted thick as felt. When this lining had been hung, a floor of hand-hewn boards was built across the rear side of the inclosure. This floor, about six by eight feet, was covered with a deerskin rug, over which were thrown lighter robes of soft fawn skin and out-of-season fox skins. Above this floor were hung curtains of deerskin. This sleeping room became a veritable box of long-haired deerskins. When it was completed the girls found it, with a seal oil lamp burning in it, warm and cozy as a steam-heated bedroom.

"Who could dream of anything so comfortable in a wilderness like this?" murmured Lucile before falling asleep in their new home on the first night.

Phi was given a place in the chief's sleeping room.

The space in the igloo before the girls' sleeping room was given over to stores. It was used too as kitchen and dining room. Here, by a snapping fire of dwarf willows, the three of them sat on the edge of the sleeping room floor and munched hardtack or dipped baked beans from tin cans.

The problem of securing a variety of food was a difficult one. The supply from the ship was found to be over-abundant in certain lines and woefully lacking in others: plenty of beans and sweet corn in cans, some flour and baking powder but no lard or bacon; some frozen and worthless potatoes; plenty of jelly in glasses; a hundred pounds of sugar. So it ran. Lucile was hard pressed to know how to cook with no oven in which to do baking and with no lard for shortening.

She had been studying this problem for some time when one day she suddenly exclaimed, "I have it!"

Drawing on her parka she hurried to the chief's igloo and asked for seal oil. Gravely he poured a supply of dark liquid from a wooden container into a tin cup.

Lucile put this to her lips for a taste. The next instant she with great difficulty set the cup on the floor while all her face was distorted with loathing.

"Rotten!" she sputtered. "A year old!"

"Eh—eh," grinned the chief, "always eat 'em so, Chukche." Thoroughly disheartened, she left the igloo. But on her way back she came upon a woman skinning a seal. Seeing the thick layer of fat that was taken from beneath the animal's skin she hastened to trade three cans of beans for it. Bearing this home in triumph she soon had the fat trying out over a slow fire.

Seal oil proved to be quite as good cooking oil as lard. Even doughnuts fried in it were pronounced delicious by the ever-hungry Phi.

Experimenting with native food was interesting. Seal steak was not bad, and seal liver was as good as calf's liver. Polar bear steak and walrus stew were impossible. "Wouldn't even make good hamburger," was Phi's verdict. The boiled flipper of a white-whale was tender as chicken. But when a hind quarter of reindeer meat found its way into the village there was feasting indeed.

In a land so little known as this one does not seek long for opportunities to express strange and unusual things. Marian had not been established a week with Lucile in their igloo, when an unusual opportunity presented itself.

Among the supplies brought from the ship was found a well-equipped medicine-chest. During her long visits in out-of-the-way places, Marian had learned much of the art of administering simple remedies. She had not been in the village three days before her fame as a doctor became known to all the village.

She had learned, with a feeling of great relief, that the bearded stranger who had posed as a witch-doctor had gone away from the village. Whether he had gone toward Whaling, or south to some other village, no one appeared to know. Now that he had departed, it seemed obvious that she was destined to take his place as the village practitioner.

It was during one of her morning "clinics," as she playfully called them, that a native of strange dress brought his little girl to her for treatment. The ailment seemed but a simple cold. Marian prescribed cough syrup and quinine, then called for the next patient. Patients were few that morning. She soon found herself wandering up the single street of the village. There she encountered the strange native and his child.

"Who are they?" she asked of a boy who understood English.

"Reindeer Chukches."

"Reindeer Chukches?" she exclaimed excitedly. "Where do they live?"

"Oh, mebby fifteen miles from here."

"Do they live on the tundra as they used to?"

"Yes."

"Are there many of them?"

"Not now. Many, one time. Now very few. Not many reindeer. Too much not moss. Plenty starve. Plenty die."

"Ask the Chukche," Marian said eagerly, "if I may go home with him to see his people."

The boy spoke for a moment with the grave-visaged stranger.

"He say, that one, he say yes," smiled the boy.

"Tell him I will be back quick." Marian was away like a shot.

Tearing into their igloo she drove Lucile into a score of activities. The medicine chest was filled and closed, paints stowed in their box, garments packed, sleeping-bags rolled up. Then they were away.

Ere she knew it, Lucile was tucked in behind a fleet-footed reindeer, speeding over the low hills.

"Now, please tell me where we are going," she asked with a smile.

"We are going to visit the most unique people in all the world—the Reindeer Chukches. They are almost an extinct race now, but the time was when every clump of willows that lined the banks of the rivers of the far north in Siberia hid one of their igloos, and every hill and tundra fed one of their herds.

"Long before the Eskimos of Alaska thought of herding the reindeer, short-haired deerskin and soft, spotted fawn-skins were traded across Bering Straits and far up along the Alaskan coast. These skins came from the camps of the Reindeer Chukches of Siberia. Many years ago the Mikado of Japan, in the treasure of furs with which he decorated his royal family, besides the mink, ermine and silver fox, had skins of rare beauty, spotted skins, brown, white and black. These were fawn-skins traded from village to village until they reached Japan. They came from the camps of the Reindeer Chukches. And now we are to see them as they were many years ago, for they have not changed. And I am to paint them! Paint them! Think of it!"

"Yes, but," Lucile smiled doubtfully, "supposing the ice gets solid while we're gone. Suppose Phi takes a fancy to cross without us? What then?"

Marian's face sobered for a moment. But the zeal of a born artist and explorer was upon her.

"Oh, fudge!" she exclaimed, "it won't. He won't. I—I—why, I'll hurry. We'll be back at East Cape in no time at all."

No wildest nomadic dream could have exceeded the life which the two girls lived in the weeks that followed.

Trailing a reindeer herd over hills and tundra; camping now in a clump of willows by the glistening ice of a stream, now beneath some shelving rock, and now in the open, wind-swept tundra; eating about an open fire, while the smoke curled from the top of the dome of the tepee-like igloo, they reveled in the strange wildness of it all. Here was a people who paid no rent, no taxes, owned no land yet lived always in abundance. In the box beside the sleeping platform were tea and sugar. Over the fire hung a copper teakettle of ancient design. In the sleeping-box, which was made of long-haired deerskins, were many robes of short-haired deerskin, fawn-skin and Siberian squirrel.

To all these the two girls were more than welcome. Their guide and his daughter did not live alone. A little tribe whose twenty igloos dotted the tundra traveled with him. These people were sometimes in need of simple remedies. For these they were singularly grateful. They, their women and their children, posed untiringly for sketches. But one thing Marian had not taken into consideration; these people seldom visited the village of East Cape. Although she did not know it, their herds were at this time feeding away from this trading metropolis of the Straits region. Each day while she seized every opportunity to sketch and hastened her work as much as she could, found them some ten miles farther from East Cape.

When at last, by signs and such native words as she knew, she indicated to her native friends that she was ready to return to East Cape, they stared at her in astonishment and indicated by a diagram on the snow that they were now at a point three days' journey from that town and that none of them expected to return before the moon was again full.

No amount of gesturing and jabbering could make them understand that it was necessary for the girls to return at once.

"We'll never get back," Marian mourned in despair, "and it's all my fault."

"Oh, we'll make it still," encouraged Lucile, cheerfully. "Probably the Straits are not fully frozen over yet anyway."

However, after a week of inaction, even Lucile lost her cheerful smile.

One morning, after they had reached what appeared to be the final depths of despair, they heard a cry of, "Tomai! Tomai! Tomai," rise in a chorus from among the tents. By this they knew that visitors had arrived. They hurried out to find the villagers grouped about three fur-clad figures standing beside three reindeer hitched to sleds of a strange design.

By a few words and by signs they were made to understand that these people came from a point some two hundred miles farther north, a village on the north coast of Russia.

As ever, eager to look upon some new type, Marian crowded through the throng when, to her immense surprise, the smaller of the three, in reality only a boy, sprang forward, and, kneeling at her feet, kissed the fur fringe of her parka.

This action, so unusual among these natives, struck her dumb. But once he had looked up into her face, she understood all; he was none other than the strange brown boy who had come swimming to them from the sea off the coast of Washington.

She was so surprised and startled at first sight of him that she found herself incapable of action. It seemed to her that she must be seeing a ghost. It appeared entirely incredible that he should be in this out of the way place when they had left him, months before, on a deserted island of Puget Sound.

Her second reaction was one of great joy; here was someone who really owed them a debt of gratitude. Might they not hope to receive assistance from him in solving the problem of making their way to the shore of Bering Straits?

Springing to his feet, the boy mingled native dialect with badly spoken English in his expression of joy at meeting them again.

At last, when the crowd had gone its way and the girls had invited him to their tent, he told them in the few words of English he had learned since seeing them, and with many clever drawings, the story of his adventures.

He was a native of the north coast of Russia; a far away point where white men's boats never come. One whaleship had, however, been carried there by the ice-floes. After trading for the natives' furs and ivory, and having found an open channel of water to the east, the captain had kidnaped him and carried him from his home. He had been made the captain's slave.

So badly was he treated, over-worked, kicked, cuffed and beaten, that when at last he saw land off the coast of Washington, dressed only in his bird-skin suit, he had leaped overboard when no one was looking and had attempted to swim ashore.

The ship had passed on out of sight. He had been swimming for two hours when the girls rescued him from what was almost sure to have been a watery grave, for he was almost ready to give up hope.

He had been missed from the ship and the captain, fearing the strong arm of the law if he were rescued by others, sent three seamen to search for him along the island. How he had fared with these, the girls knew well enough.

After leaving the camp of the girls he had wandered in the woods and along the beach for two weeks. He had at last been picked up by some honest fishermen who turned him over to the revenue cutter which made Alaskan ports. By the cutter he had been carried to Nome and from there made his way, little by little, by skin-boat, dog-team, and reindeer back to his native village. When he had finished telling his story he turned to Marian and said:

"Idel-bene?" (yours) meaning he would like to hear their story.

Marian was not slow in telling their troubles.

"Me, I will take you back," the boy exclaimed as she finished. "To-day we go."

Two hours later, with sleds loaded, they were discussing two possible trails, one leading down a river where blizzards constantly threatened, the other a valley trail through wolf-infested hills. The latter course was finally chosen, since it promised to be the least dangerous at that time of the year. Then they were away.



CHAPTER IX

A CLOSE CALL

They had made half the distance to the village. Hopes were running high, when something occurred which threatened disaster.

Far up on the side of the hill along the base of which they were traveling, there stood here and there a clump of scraggly, wind-torn fir trees. Suddenly there appeared from out one of these clumps of scrub trees, a gray streak. Another appeared, then another and another, until there were six. They did not pause at the edge of the bush, but rushed with swift, gliding motion down the steep hillside, and their course led them directly toward the little caravan. Six gaunt gray wolves they were, a pack of brigands in the Arctic desert.

Perhaps Marian, who rode on the last sled, saw them first. Perhaps Ad-loo-at, the native, did. At any rate, before she could scream a warning to him he had slapped his reindeer on the back and the sled on which Marian rode shot forward so suddenly that she was nearly thrown from her seat. In driving in the north they do not travel single file, but each deer runs beside the sled of the one before it. The driver who is to occupy the foremost position chooses the best trained deer and attaches two reins to his halter that he may guide him. The drivers who follow use but one rein. By jerking this they can cause the reindeer to go faster, but they have no power to guide him. He simply trots along in his place beside the other sled.

Marian had thought this an admirable arrangement until now. It left her free to admire the sharp triangles of deep purple and light yellow which lay away in the distance, a massive mountain range whose tops at times smoked with the snow of an oncoming blizzard. Or, if she tired of this, she might sit and dream of many things as they glided over the snow. But now with a wolf-pack on their trail, with the nearest human habitation many miles away, with her reindeer doing his utmost to keep up with the racing lead-deer, that slender jerk-line with which she could do so little seemed a fragile "life-line" in case of emergency.

With wrinkled brow she watched the pack which now had made its way down the hillside and was following in full cry on their trail. They were not gaining; her heart was cheered by that. At least she did not think they were, yet, yes, there was one, a giant wolf, a third larger than his fellows, outstripping the others. Now he appeared to be ten yards ahead of them, now twenty, now thirty. The rest were only holding the pace of the reindeer, but this one was gaining, there was no mistaking that. She shivered at the thought.

It was a perilous moment, and she felt so helpless. She longed to urge her deer to go faster. She could not do that. He was keeping his place with difficulty. She could only sit and hope that somehow the wolf-leader would tire of the chase.

Even now she was not sorry they had come, but it was unfortunate, she thought, that there were no rifles on their sleds. Ad-loo-at had taken with him only an old-fashioned native lance, a sharp steel point set upon a long wooden handle. That was all the weapon they had and, foot by foot, yard by yard, the gaunt, gray marauder was coming closer. Marian fancied she could hear the chop-chop of his frothing jaws.

Then, suddenly came catastrophe. With the mad perversity of his kind, her sled deer, suddenly turning from his position beside the sled, whirled about in a wide, sweeping circle which threatened to overturn her sled and leave her alone, defenseless against the hungry pack.

It was a terrible moment. Gripping the ropings of the sled with one hand, she tugged at the jerk-rein with the other.

"It's no use," she cried in despair; "I can't turn him."

One glance down the trail turned her heart faint; her sled-deer was now racing almost directly toward the oncoming pack, the gray leader not a hundred yards away.

In desperation, she threw herself from the sled, and, grasping at some dwarf willows as she slid, attempted to check the career of the mad deer. Twice her grip was broken, but the third time it held; the deer was brought round with a wrench which nearly dislocated her shoulder.

And now the deer for the first time scented danger. With a wild snort he turned to face the oncoming foe. A large deer with all his scraggly antlers might hold a single wolf at bay, but this deer's antlers had been cut to mere stubs that he might travel more lightly. With such weapons he must quickly come to grief.

It was a tragic moment. Marian searched her brain for a plan. Flight was now out of the question, yet defense seemed impossible; there was not a weapon on her sled.

Suddenly her heart leaped for joy. The fight was to be taken from her hand. Ad-loo-at, with the faithful oversight which he exercised over those entrusted to his care, having seen all that had happened had whirled his deer about, tied it to Lucile's sled and now came racing over the snow. He swung above his head the trusty native lance which had meant defeat to so many wild beasts in the days of long ago.

But what was this? Instead of dashing right at the enemy, the Eskimo boy was coming straight for the reindeer and on the opposite side from that on which the wolf was approaching.

"He doesn't see the leader," Marian groaned. "He thinks the rest of the pack are all there are."

But in another second she knew this to be untrue, for, stooping low, the boy appeared to go on all fours as he glided over the snow; he was stalking the wolf even as the wolf was stalking the deer.

Realizing that the wolf was planning to attack the deer and not her, Marian set herself to watch a spectacle such as she would seldom witness in a lifetime.

She had often seen the antics of the Eskimo and Chukche hunters as they performed in the cosgy (common workroom) during the long Arctic nights. She had seen them go through this gliding motion which Ad-loo-at practiced now. She had seen them turn, leap in the air and kick as high as their heads with both feet, landing again on their feet with a smile. She had admired these feats, which no white boy could do, but had thought them only a form of play. Now she was beginning to realize that they were part of the training for just such emergencies as this.

Now her eyes were on the wolf, and now on the boy. As the wolf approached she cringed back to the very end of her jerk-line. She saw his red tongue lolling, heard the chop-chop of his iron jaws and caught the wicked gleam of his eyes.

The boy appeared to time his pace, for he came on more slowly. The deer, still facing the wolf, gave forth a wild snort of rage. He appeared to be unconscious of the fact that he was as defenseless as his driver.

Now the wolf was but a few yards away. Suddenly, pausing, he sprang quickly to the right, to the left, then to the right again. Before the deer could recover his bewildered senses, the wolf leaped full for his side.

But someone else leaped too. With a marvelous spring, the Eskimo boy landed full upon the reindeer's back. Coming face to face with the surprised and enraged wolf, he poised his lance for the fatal thrust. But at that instant, with a bellow of fear, the deer bolted.

In wild consternation Marian tugged at the skin-rope. In another moment she had the deer under control and turned to witness a battle royal. The Eskimo had been thrown from the deer's back, but, agile as a cat, he had landed upon his feet and had turned to face the enemy. He was not a moment too soon, for with a snarl of fury the wolf was upon him.

For a fraction of a second the lance gleamed. Came a snarl, half of rage, half of fear, as the wolf fell backward. But he was on his feet again. It was to no purpose. All was over in an instant. Long practice with the lance had given the boy power to baffle his enemy and send the lance straight to the wild beast's heart.

"Come," Marian was startled by the sound of his voice at her side. She had managed to retain her hold on the jerk-rein. She now felt it being taken from her, knew that she was being lifted onto the sled and, the next moment, sensed the cool breeze that fanned her cheek. They were racing away to join Lucile and to continue their journey.

As she looked back, she saw the cowardly pack snarling over the bones of their fallen leader, and realizing that all danger was past, settled down in her place with a sigh as she said:

"That—that was a very close one."

"Too much close," Ad-loo-at smiled back. "In north we must go—how you say it—pre—pre—"

"Prepared," supplemented Marian. "We'll never travel again without rifles."

"Oh! yes. Mebby," the boy smiled back. "Mebby all right. Mebby rifle miss fire. Him never miss fire." He patted first his lance, then the muscles of his strong right arm. "Better prepared think mine."

Marian smiled as the brown boy ran ahead to free his own deer and prepare to continue the journey. "Surely," she thought, "physical fitness is a great thing. The boy has paid us well for fighting his battles for him on Puget Sound."

No further adventures befell them on their journey, but it was with thankful hearts that they saw the familiar outlines of the village at East Cape. As the reindeer came to a stop they sprang from their sled, but Ad-loo-at made no move to follow them. "Me—I go back," he said gravely. "You safe—I no stay."

"But you must rest—and eat," remonstrated Lucile. "And the reindeers, they need rest."

"Huh," came the answer, with a shrug. "Better time to rest when all work is done. Me young; reindeers young—we rest at camp."

"But you must wait till I—I—well, there is something that I—that you—" Lucile fumbled for the right words. She sensed that the boy, for all his youth, had a grown-up way of looking at things. There was that talisman she had carried ever since that night he had left them there on the island of Puget Sound—the three elk teeth set with jade and an uncut diamond. "Don't let him go, Marian, till I come back."

She darted into their igloo, to return an instant later, the odd jewel gleaming in her hand. At sight of it a smile spread over Ad-loo-at's face. "Ch—k!" he chuckled.

"You must take it back," Lucile demanded.

The boy threw back his head and laughed boisterously. "It is a charm," he said. "Can one Chukche take back a charm? It will keep you—what you say?—safe, yes. Me, I have this." He held up his lance.

"But you must," urged Marian in turn.

"Must—hear you that, reindeer. Heya! let us go!" He waved his lance aloft in farewell. "Heya—mush!" he commanded, and the three reindeer broke into the untiring stride that would soon carry them from sight. The two girls stood watching him till, with a last wave of his hand, he disappeared around a hill. Then, alone again, they thought of Phi.

"I wonder if he has gone on without us," said Marian.

"I wonder. No, there he is!" exclaimed Lucile. "He's coming down the hill to meet us."

"Are—are we too late?" Lucile faltered as he reached their side.

"About six hours, I should say," Phi grinned.

"Six hours?"

"His nibs, the old Chukche guide, left for Cape Prince of Wales and all suburban points some six hours ago. Some one offered him more money than I did. I have a fancy it was your friend, the bearded miner who wanted my mail."

"And—and you waited for us?"

"Naturally, since the guide left."

"But you could have gone sooner?"

"Some three days, I'm told."

"But you didn't?"

He smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

Marian's head whirled. She was torn between conflicting emotions. Most of all, she felt terribly ashamed. Here was a boy she had not fully trusted, yet he had given up a chance to escape to freedom and had waited for them.

"I—I beg your pardon," she said weakly. She sat down rather unsteadily on the reindeer sled.

"We couldn't help it," she said presently. "They just wouldn't bring us back. Isn't there some other way?"

"I've thought of a possible one. I'll make a little try-out. Be back in an hour."

Phi was off like a flash. A few minutes later the girls thought they heard him calling old Rover, who had been left in his care.

"Wonder what he wants of him?" said Lucile.

"I don't know," said Marian. "But I do know I'm powerful hungry. Let's go find something to eat."



CHAPTER X

FINDING THE TRAIL

"I think we can go." Phi smiled as he spoke. His hour for a try-out had expired. He was back.

"Can—can we cross the Straits?" Marian asked, breathless with emotion.

"I think so."

"How?"

"Got a new guide. I'll show you. Be ready in a half-hour. Bring your pictures and a little food. Not much. Wear snowshoes. Ice is terribly piled up."

He disappeared in the direction of his own igloo.

Marian looked about the cozy deerskin home where were stored their few belongings, then gazed away at the masses of deep purple shadows that stretched across the imprisoned ocean. For a moment courage failed her.

"Perhaps," she said to herself, "it would be better to try to winter here."

But even as she thought this, she caught a vision of that time when she and her companion had been crowded out of a native village to shift for themselves. Then, too, she thought of the possible starving-time in the spring, after the white bear had gone north and before walrus would come, or trading schooners.

"No," she said out loud, "no, we'd better try it."

When the girls joined Phi on the edge of the ice-floe, they looked about for the guide but saw none. Only Rover barked them a welcome.

"Where's the guide?" asked Lucile.

"You'll see. C'm'on," said the boy, leading the way.

For a mile they traveled over the solid shore-ice. They then came to a stretch of water, dark as midnight. At the edge of this was a two-seated kiak.

Phi motioned Lucile to a seat. Deftly, he paddled her across to the other side. It was with a sinking feeling that she felt herself silently carried toward the north by the gigantic ice-floe.

Marian and the dog were quickly ferried over. Then, after drawing the kiak upon the ice, the boy turned directly north and began walking rapidly. At times he broke into a run.

"Have to make good time," he explained as he snatched Marian's roll of sketches from her hand. "Got to get the trail."

They did make good time. Alternately running and walking, they kept up a pace of some six or seven miles an hour.

"Why, I thought—thought we were going to go east," puffed Marian. "We're just going down the beach."

Phi did not answer.

They had raced on for nearly an hour when they suddenly came upon a kiak drawn up as theirs had been on the ice.

"Ah! I thought so," said the boy. "Now's the time for a guide. Here, Rover!"

He seized the dog by his collar and set him on the invisible trail of the men who had deserted that kiak. The dog walked slowly away, sniffing the ice as he went. His course was due east. The three followed him in silence. Presently his speed increased. He took on an air of confidence. With tail up, ears back, he sniffed the ice only now and then as he dashed over great, flat pans, then over little mountains of broken ice, to emerge again upon flat surfaces.

Marian understood, and her admiration for Phi grew. He had found the trail of the men who had crossed the Straits before them. He had put Rover on that trail. Rover could not fail to follow. The trail was fresh, only seven hours old. Rover could have followed one as many days old.

"Good old Rover," Marian murmured, "good old Rover, a white man's dog."

All at once a question came to her mind. They had been obliged to go several miles north to pick up the trail. This was due to the movement of the floe. This movement still continued. It was carrying them still farther to the north. The Diomede Islands, halfway station of the Straits, were small; they offered a goal only two or three miles in length. If they were carried much farther north, would they not miss the islands?

She confided her fears to Phi.

"I thought of that," he smiled. "There is a little danger of that, but not much, I guess. You see, I'll try to time our rate of travel, and figure out as closely as I can when we have covered the eighteen miles that should bring us even with the islands. Then, too, old Rover will be losing the trail about that time. When that bearded friend of yours and his guide leave the floe to go upon the solid shore ice of the islands, the floe is going to keep right on moving north. That breaks the trail, see? When we strike the end of that trail we can go due south and hit the islands. If the air is at all clear, we can see them. It's a clumsy arrangement, but better than going it without a trail."

Marian did "see," but this did not entirely still the wild beating of her heart as she leaped a yawning chasm between giant up-ended cakes of ice, or felt her way cautiously across a strip of newly-formed ice that bent under her weight as if it were made of rubber.

It was with a strange, wild thrill that she realized they were far out over the conquered sea. Hundreds of feet below was the bed of Bering Straits. Above that bed a wild, swirling current of frigid salt water raced.

Once, as they were about to cross a stretch of new ice, Phi threw himself flat and hacked a hole through the ice. Water bubbled up, while Marian caught the wild surging rush of the current.

For a second her knees trembled, her face blanched. Phi saw and smiled.

"Never fear," he exclaimed; "we'll make it all right. And when you get back home you'll have a story to tell that will make Eliza's crossing on the ice seem like a picnic party crossing a trout stream on stepping-stones."

It was not long after that, however, when even this daring boy's face sobered. Old Rover, who had been following the trail unhesitatingly, suddenly came to a halt. He turned to the right, sniffing the ice. Then he turned to the left. After that he looked up into the face of the boy, as if to say:

"Where's the trail gone?"

Phi examined the ice carefully.

"Been a sudden jam here," he muttered; "then the ice has slid along, some north, some south. It has all happened since our friends passed this way. You just wait here. I'll take Rover to the north and let him pick up the trail. When I find it, I'll come back far enough to call to you. May be to the south, though, but we'll soon see."

He disappeared around a giant ice-pile and, in a twinkling, was lost to view.

The two girls, placing their burdens of food and Marian's sketches on an up-ended ice-cake, sat down to wait. They were growing weary. The strain of the adventure into this puzzling, unknown ice-field was telling on their nerves.

"I wish we were safe at Cape Prince of Wales," sighed Marian.

"Yes, or even East Cape," said Lucile. "I think I'd be content to stay there and chance the year with the natives."

"Anyway, Phi's doing his best," said Marian. "Isn't he a strange one, though? Do you think he has the blue envelope?"

"I don't know."

"Well, I think he has."

"I don't know," Lucile said sleepily. Fatigue and the keen Arctic air were making her drowsy.

Presently, she leaned back against an ice-cake and fell asleep.

"I'll let her sleep," Marian mused. "It'll give her strength for what comes next, whatever that is."

An hour passed, but no call echoed across the silent white expanse. Marian, now pacing back and forth across a narrow ice-pan, now pausing to listen, felt her anxiety redoubled by every succeeding moment. What could have happened to Phi? Had some mishap befallen him? Had a slip thrown him into some dangerous crevice? Had thin ice dropped him to sure death in the surging undercurrent? Or had he merely wandered too far and lost his way?

Whatever may have happened, he did not return.

At length, with patience exhausted, she climbed the highest ice-pile and gazed away to the north. The first glance brought forth a cry of dismay. A narrow lane of dark water, stretching from east to west, extended as far as eye could see in each direction. It lay not a quarter of a mile from the spot where she stood.

"He's across and can never recross to us," she moaned in despair. "No creature could brave that undercurrent and live. And there is no other way."

Then, as the full terror of their situation flashed upon her, she sank down in a heap and buried her face in her hands.

They were two lone girls ten miles from any land, on the bosom of a vast ice-floe, which was slowly but surely creeping toward the unknown northern sea. They had no chart, no compass, no trail to follow and no guide. To move seemed futile, yet to remain where they were meant sure disaster.

As if to complete the tragedy of the whole situation, a snow-fog drifted down upon them. Blotting out the black ribbon of water and every ice-pile that was more than a stone's throw from them, it swept on to the south with a silence that was more appalling than had been the grinding scream of a tidal wave beneath the ice.

"Lucile! Lucile!" she fairly screamed as she came down to the surface of the pan. "Lucile! Wake up! We are lost! He is lost!"

* * * * * *

What had happened to the young college boy had been this: He had hastened to the north in search of the trail. Rover, with nose close to the ice, had searched diligently for the scent. For a long time his search had been unrewarded, but at last, with a joyous bark, he sprang away across an ice-pan.

The boy followed him far enough to make sure that he had truly found the trail, then, calling him back, turned to retrace his steps.

Great was his consternation when he discovered the cleavage in the floe. Hopefully he had at first gone east along the channel in search of a possible passage. He found none. After racing for a mile, he turned and retraced his steps to the point where he had first come upon open water. From there he hurried west along the channel. Another twenty minutes was wasted. No possible crossing-place could be found.

He then sat down to think. He thought first of his companions. That they were in a dire plight, he realized well. That they would be able to devise any plan by which they could find their way to any shore, he doubted; yet, as he thought of it, his own position seemed more critical. The trail he had found would now be useless. He was north of the break in the floe. Land lay to the south of it. He had no way to cross. In such circumstances, the dog with his keen sense of smell, and his compass with its unerring finger, were equally useless.

"Nothing to do but wait," he mumbled, so he sat down patiently to wait.

And, as he waited, the snow-fog settled down over all.



CHAPTER XI

"WITHOUT COMPASS OR GUIDE"

It was with a staggering sense of hopelessness that the two girls on the bosom of the Arctic floe saw the snow-fog settle down.

"It's likely to last for days, and by that time—" Marian's lips refused to frame the words that expressed their condition when the snow-fog lifted.

"By that time—" echoed Lucile. "But no, we must do something. Surely, there is some way!"

"Without compass or guide?" Marian smiled at the impossibility of there being a solution.

Unconsciously, she had repeated the first line of an old song. Lucile said over the verse:

"Without compass or guide. On the crest of the tide. Oh! Light of the stars, Pray pilot me home."

Involuntarily, her glance stole skyward. Instantly an exclamation escaped her lips:

"Oh, Marian! We can see them! We can! We can!"

"What can we see?" asked Marian.

"The stars!"

It was true. The snow-fog, though spread over the vast surface of the ice, was shallow. The stars gleamed through it as if there were no fog at all.

Wildly their hearts beat now with hope.

"If we can locate the big dipper," said Lucile, whose astronomical research had been of a practical sort, "we can follow the line made by the two stars at the lower edge of the dipper and find the North Star. All we have to do then is to let the North Star guide us home."

This was quickly done. And in a short while they had mapped out a course for themselves which would certainly come nearer bringing them to the desired haven than would the north-ward drift of the ice-floe.

"But Phi?" exclaimed Lucile.

Marian stood for a moment undecided. Should they leave this spot without him? She believed he would make a faithful attempt to rejoin them. What if they were gone when he came? Suddenly she laughed.

"Rover!" she exclaimed. "He can follow our trail. If Phi comes, he will have only to follow us. He can travel faster than we shall. He may catch up with us."

So with many a backward glance at the gleaming North Star, the two girls set their course south by east, a course which in time should bring them in the vicinity of the Diomede Islands.

In their minds, however, were many questions. Would further tide-cracks impede their progress? Would the snow-fog continue? If it did, would they ever be able to locate the two tiny islands which were, after all, mere rocky pillars jutting from a sea of ice?

* * * * * *

Phi did not sit long on the ice-pile under the snow-fog. He was born for action. Something must be done. Quickly he was on the run.

As he rushed back over the way in which he had come, something caught his eye.

An immense ice-pan had been up-ended by the press of the drift. It had toppled half over and lodged across the edge of a smaller cake. Now, like an ancient drawbridge, it hung suspended over the black moat of the salt water channel.

The boy's quick eye had detected a very slight movement downward. As he remembered it now, the cake had made a far more obtuse angle with the surface of the pool a half-hour before than it did now.

Was there hope in this? Hastily he arranged three bits of ice in one pile, then two in another. By dropping on his stomach and squinting across these, he could just see the tip of the up-ended cake. If it were in motion the tip would soon disappear. Eagerly he strained his eyes for a few seconds. Then, in disgust, he closed his eyes. The cake did not seem to move.

For some time he lay there in deep thought. He was searching in his mind for a way out.

After a while he opened his eyes. More from curiosity than hope, he squinted once more along the line. Then, with a wild shout, he sprang into the air. The natural drawbridge was falling. Its point had dropped out of line.

The shout died on his lips. His eyes had warned him that the channel of water was widening. If it widened too rapidly, if the drawbridge fell too slowly, or ceased to fall at all, hope would die.

Moment by moment he measured the two distances with his eye. Rover, sitting by his side, now and again peered up into his eyes as if to say: "What's it all about?"

Now the drawbridge took a sudden drop of a foot. Hope rose. Then, again, it appeared wedged solidly in place. It did not move. The channel widened a foot, two feet, three. Hope seemed vain.

But now came a sudden tide tremor across the floe. With a crunching sound the massive cake toppled and fell.

The boy was on his feet in an instant. The chasm was bridged. But the cake had broken in two. Could he make it?

Calling to his dog, he leaped upon the slippery surface. An ever-widening river of water flowed where the cake had split. With one wild bound, he cleared it. The dog followed. In another moment they were safe on the other side.

"That's well over with," the boy sighed, patting the old dog on the head. "Now the question is, how can we find our friends?"

That, indeed, was a problem. They had covered considerable ground. The ice had been shifting. To pick up their back trail seemed impossible. An hour's search convinced him that it could not be done. He sat down in a brown study. He could not go away and leave these girls to drift north and perish, yet further search seemed futile.

Just as he was about to despair, Rover began to bark in the distance. Following the sound, he came to where the dog was apparently barking at nothing. But as the boy approached, the dog shot away over the ice.

"A trail!" he muttered, following on.

The ice was hard and smooth. A soft skin "muckluck" would leave no mark. Even the hard toes of a white bear would not scratch it.

When the boy had followed for a half-hour, he thought of these things, and paused to consider. What if he were following the meandering trail of a lumbering white bear? And if it happened to be a trail of a human being, was it his own trail, that of the girls, or of the bearded miner and his guide?

His compass would tell something. Studying his compass then, he walked forward slowly.

Fifteen minutes of this told him that this was no white bear's trail. It went too straight ahead for that. Neither could it be his own trail, for he would have come to a sudden turn before this. One thing more was certain: The person or persons who made this trail were headed due south by east. They would, if they did not change their course, in time reach the vicinity of the Diomede Islands. Were they his friends, or the unfaithful guide and his party? This he could not tell.

After a few moments' reflection he decided that there remained but one thing for him to do: to follow this trail.

"All right, old dog," he said, "let's see where this ends, and who's at the end. Might be an Eskimo hunter who has wandered far on the ice-floe, for all I know; but he'll end up sometime."

Moment by moment the scent of the trail they followed grew fresher. He could tell this by the old dog's growing eagerness. At every ice-pile they rounded, he expected to catch sight of human figures. Would it be two men or two girls? He could not tell. Not a chance footprint in soft snow had caught his eye.

When he had fairly given up hope of overtaking them, as he speeded around a gigantic ice-pile he came at once in sight of those he followed. So overjoyed was he at sight of human beings that, before determining their identity, he shouted cheerily:

"Hey, there!"

The figure nearest him wheeled in his track. Then, with the fierce growl of a beast, he sprang at the boy's throat.

So taken by surprise was Phi that he made no defense. He caught a vision of a pair of fiery eyes set in a mass of shaggy hair; the next instant he felt himself crashed to the hard surface of the ice.

The advantage was all with the man. Larger, stronger, older, with the handicap of the aggressor, he bade fare to finish his work quickly.

The native guide had passed beyond the next ice-pile. Rover had followed.

But the boy's college days had not been for naught; he knew a trick or two. As if stunned by the fall, he relaxed and lay motionless. Seeing this, the man took time to plant his knees on the boy's chest before moving his horny hands toward his throat.

The next instant, as if thrown by a springboard, the man flew into the air. Phi sprang to his feet, his one thought of escape. Turning, he dashed around an ice-pile, then another and another. But fate was not with him. Just at the moment when he felt that he could elude his pursuer, his foot struck a crevice in the ice, and he went sprawling. Again the wild terror was upon him.

But this time there came tearing over the ice a new wild terror, and this one his friend. Old Rover, silent and determined, sprang clean at the man's throat. The assailant went down, striking out with hands and feet, and roaring for mercy.

Phi dragged the dog off. "Get!" he said. The man looked surly, but one look at the determined boy and the eager jaws of the dog set him slouching away.

"You're some dog!" the boy laughed at the old leader. "Well, now, I'll say you are!"



CHAPTER XII

"WHAT IS THAT?"

When the man had gone, Phi sat down upon an up-ended ice-cake to rest and think. His logical course was evident enough; to wait for perhaps half an hour, allowing the man, who would doubtless be able to overtake his guide, to get a sufficient distance ahead to prevent any further unpleasant encounters. Still, he was glad now to have his rifle, small as it was. He had brought only a few cartridges for it, as they were an added weight. These had been spilled from his pocket in the scuffle, but by a diligent search he was able to find five. He was about to abandon the search when, with an exclamation of astonishment, he sprang forward, and bending, picked up an envelope.

"The blue envelope," he exclaimed. "My blue envelope. He must be the bearded miner the girls told me about. It was lucky he tried to assassinate me after all."

The envelope had been torn open, but the letter, though blurred with grime and dirt, was still in it. With eager fingers he pulled it out.

"Couldn't read our cipher, so he was going to Nome for help, I reckon," he muttered. "All I've got to say is, it's lucky he lost it and I found it."

He read the missive hastily, then a light of hope shone in his eye.

"If only I can make it back to the American shore," he exulted. "Rover, old boy, get back on your job. We're going to the islands."

Hopefully he hurried forward. But they had tarried too long, for, not a hundred rods from their starting point, they came upon a broad, dark break in the floe, such a break as no draw-bridge of ice would ever span.

"And, like the other, it's endless," Phi groaned as his eye swept the line from left to right and from right to left again; then he sat down to think.

A half hour before this Lucile had said to Marian: "Listen, I think I hear a dog bark."

They listened and the bark came to them very distinctly.

"Is it Rover, or does it come from the island?" asked Lucile.

"I can't tell," whispered Marian.

For some time they listened. When at last they prepared to resume their journey, Lucile glanced upward again. Then a cry of consternation escaped her lips; the fog had thickened; the stars were lost to them. They were again adrift on the trackless floe without compass or guide.

At the moment when Phi sat down to think, they were just coming in sight of that same break in the floe, on the side of which he sat. They were not a mile apart, but the distance had as well been a hundred miles as, in this labyrinth of ice-floes, no person finds another, and, as it turned out later, Phi took the trail to the left and they the one to the right.

Why the two girls chose to travel to the right along the break, they could not have told, nor why they traveled at all, unless because motion quieted their nerves and served to allay their fears. Perhaps there was something of Providence in it. Certainly it did bring them a bit of good fortune.

Lucile had rounded a gigantic ice-pile when suddenly she gripped Marian's arm.

"What's this?" she exclaimed.

A brown object lay some distance ahead of them. With bated breaths they crept cautiously forward; it might be a white bear or walrus.

Suddenly Marian threw up her head and laughed. "It's only a kiak. Some Eskimo has left it on the ice and the floe has carried it away."

"May be a valuable find. Let's hurry," exclaimed Lucile.

Breaking into a run, they soon reached its side.

"Let's explore it!" whispered Marian. "You take the forecastle and I'll take the after-cabin," she laughed, as she thrust her arm into the open space toward the stern of the kiak.

"Why, there is something there!" she exclaimed.

"Something here, too!" answered Lucile excitedly, as her slender white hand tugged away at a bundle which had been thrust into the prow of the boat.

"It's like going through your stocking Christmas morning!" laughed Marian, for the moment quite forgetting their dilemma in the excitement of discovery.

Marian drew forth a large sealskin sack. It was heavy and was tied tightly at the mouth. It gave forth a strange plop as she turned it over.

"Some sort of liquid," she announced. "Probably seal-oil."

With difficulty she untied the strings and opened the sack. Then quickly she pinched her nose. "Whew! What a smell!"

"Let's see," said Lucile, dropping the bundle she had just dragged forth. "Yes, it's seal-oil. That's a good find."

"Why? We can't use that stuff. It must be at least a year old and rotten. Talk about limburger cheese! Whew!"

She quickly tied the sack up again.

"Well," said Lucile, "we probably won't want to use it for food, but white people as fine-blooded as we have been compelled to. It's better than starving. But I was thinking about a fire. If we ever find any fuel where we're going—wherever that is—" she smiled a trifle uncertainly, "we'll need some oil to help start the fire if the fuel is damp, as most driftwood is."

"Driftwood? When do we go ashore?" laughed Marian.

"It's well to be prepared for anything," smiled Lucile. "Let's see what's in my prize package."

Marian leaned forward eagerly while Lucile untied a leather thong.

"Deerskins!" she cried exultantly. "Four of them! Enough for a sleeping-bag! And wrapped in a sealskin square which will protect us from the damp. I believe," she said thoughtfully, "that this native must have been planning a little trip up the coast, and if he was there must be other useful things in our ark, for an Eskimo never ventures far without being prepared for every emergency."

Once more they bent over the kiak, each one to search her corner.

"Another sack!" cried Lucile; "a hunting sack, with matches wrapped in oiled sealskin, a butcher knife, some skin-rope, a pair of boola balls with the strings, a fish line with hook and sinker; two big needles stuck in a bit of canvas. That's about all, but it's a lot."

"I've found a little circular wooden box," said Marian. "More food, I guess; probably the kind you can't eat without gagging. No," she cried, after a moment, "here's a big square of tea—the Russian kind, all pressed hard into a brick. There's enough for a dozen tea parties. Oh, joy! here are three pilot biscuits!"

"Pilot biscuits!" Lucile danced about on the ice.

These large brown disks of hardtack, so often despised, would not have been half so welcome had they been solid gold.

"Well, I guess that's about all," but Marian smiled. "I'm hungry already, but we daren't eat anything yet. We'll save these and eat the deer meat first that we brought along."

"We'll be pretty awful hungry, I am afraid," said Lucile, "before we leave the ocean. But what worries me just now is a drink. Do you suppose we could find an ice-pool of fresh water?"

A short search found them the desired pool, and each drank to her heart's content. They then sat down upon the top of the kiak for a brief consultation. After talking matters over they decided that the best thing they could do was to remain by the kiak until the fog cleared. It was true that the kiak, carefully managed, would carry them across the break in the floe, but, once across, they would be no better off than before, since they had no way of determining directions. Furthermore, neither of them had ever handled a kiak and they knew all too well what a spill meant in that stinging water.

"Guess we'd better stick right here," said Marian, and Lucile agreed.

"Now," suggested Lucile, "we'll put your middy on a paddle and set it up as a sign of distress; then, since the ice isn't piling, I think we might both sleep a little while."

The flag was soon hoisted, and the girls, with the sealskin square beneath them, lay down under the deerskins and attempted to sleep. But the deerskins were not large enough to cover them, and kept sliding off. They were chilled through and sleep was impossible.

"Lucile," said Marian at last, "I believe we could set the kiak up and bank it solidly into place, then creep into it and sleep there."

"We might," said Lucile doubtfully.

The kiak was soon set, and, after many doublings and twistings, with much laughter they managed to slide down into it, and there, with two of the deerskins for a mattress and two for covers, they at last fell asleep in one another's arms, as peacefully as children in a trundle-bed.

"Oh, Marian, you're too—too chubby!" Lucile laughed, as she attempted to struggle from the bean-pod-like bed, after they had slept for some time.

Their first glance at the break in the floe told them it had widened rather than narrowed. A look skyward showed them that the fog too had thickened. Lucile's brow wrinkled; her eyes were downcast.

"Cheer up!" said Marian. "You can never tell what will happen. Things change rapidly in this Arctic world. We'd better explore our ice-floe, hadn't we? And don't you think we could eat a bit before we go?"

Cheered by the very thought of something to be done, Lucile munched her half of the pilot biscuit and bit of reindeer meat contentedly.

Then, after they had seen to it that their white middy flag was properly fastened, for this must act as a guide back to camp, they prepared to go exploring.

Armed with the butcher knife, Lucile led the way. Marian carried the fishing tackle, and about her waist were wound the strings of the boola ball.

"Quite some hunters," laughed Marian. "Regular Robinson Crusoettes!"

Several wide circles of the camp revealed nothing but ice, the whiteness of which was relieved here and there by spots of water, black as night.

"Might be fish in them," suggested Marian.

"Yes, but you couldn't catch them. You can only catch tomcod through a hole in the ice."

They were becoming tired, and had spoken of turning back, when Marian whispered:

"Down!"

She pulled her companion into the dark side of an ice-pile.

A shadow had passed over the ice. Now it passed again, and Lucile, looking up, saw a small flock of ducks circling for a pool of water not twenty yards away.

"Wha—what's the idea?" she whispered.

"Boola balls. Maybe we can catch one. They come from the north; not easily scared."

"Can you—"

"Yes, my brother showed me how to handle the boola balls. You whirl them about your head a few times, then you let them go. If the string strikes a duck's neck, it winds all about it; then the duck can't fly."

With eager fingers Marian straightened out the twelve feet of double-strand leather thong.

"There! There! They're down!" whispered Lucile.

"You stay here. If they rise and fly away, call me."

Creeping around two piles of ice, Marian threw herself flat and began to crawl the remaining distance across a flat pan of ice. Her heart was beating wildly, for in her veins there flowed a strain of the hunter's blood of her Briton ancestors of many generations back.

Now she was forty feet away, now twenty, now ten, and the ducks had not flown. Stretching out the thong, she rose on an elbow and set the balls whirling over her head. Once, twice, three times, then up she sprang and with one more whirl sent the string singing through the air.

The young ducks, craning their necks with curiosity, did not move until something came crashing at them, and a wildly frantic girl sprang toward them.

To the duck about whose neck the string had encircled, this move was too late, for Marian was upon him. And a moment later, looking very much like the old woman who went to market, with a dead gray duck dangling from her right arm, Marian returned in triumph.

"Oh, Lucile," she cried, "I got him! I got him!"

"Fine! You shall have a medal," said Lucile.

"But how will we cook him?"

"Well," said Lucile, after a moment's thought, "it's growing colder; going to freeze hard. They say freezing meat is almost as good as cooking it. I don't know—"

"Look!" cried Marian suddenly, balancing herself at the crest of a high pile of ice. "What's all that black a little way over there to the left? It's not like ice. Do you suppose it could be an island?"

"Is the ice piling there?" Lucile asked, clinging to her friend's side. "No, it isn't, so it can't be an island, for the island would stop the ice as it flows and make it pile up."

"But what can it be?"

"We can't go over there, for we can't see our flag from there."

"Yes, we can," said Marian. "I'll take off my petticoat and put it on this ice-pile. We can see it from there, and when we get back here we can see the flag."

This new beacon was soon established. Then, with trembling and eager footsteps, the girls hastened to what appeared to be an oasis in a desert of ice.



CHAPTER XIII

STRANGE DISCOVERIES

It was a strange sight that met the eyes of the two girls as they paused halfway to the dark patch on the surface of the ice which loomed like a giant's shadow in the snow-fog. With eager feet they dashed on, leaping narrow chasms and stumbling over ice barriers in their mad rush.

The revelation which came as they rounded the last pile of ice was both a surprise and a disappointment. Great heaps of ashes, piles of bottles and tin cans, frozen masses of garbage; junk of every description, from a rusty tin dipper to a discarded steel range, met their eyes.

"It's a graveyard," murmured Marian, "a graveyard of things people don't want."

"That some people didn't want!" corrected the more practical Lucile. "Marian, we're rich!"

"Rich?" Marian stared.

"Why, yes! Don't you see? There's an old clothes wringer; that's got a lot of wood in it. And there's an old paper bucket. That'll burn. There's a lot of things like that. It won't take any time at all to get enough wood to cook our duck!"

"A fire! A fire!" exclaimed Marian, jumping up and down in a wild dance. Then, seized with Lucile's spell of practical philosophy, she grasped a rusty tin kettle.

"We can cook it in this. There's a hole in it, but we can draw a cloth into that, and we can scour it up with ashes."

The next few minutes echoed with glad exclamations: "Here's an old fork!" "Here's half a sack of salt!" "Here are two rusty spoons!" "Here's a broiler," and so it went on.

One would have believed they were in the greatest department store in the land, with the privilege of carrying away anything that would fit in their kitchen and that suited their fancy. Truth was, they were rummaging over the city of Nome's vast garbage pile. That garbage pile had been accumulated during the previous year, and was, at this time, several hundred miles from the city. During the long nine months of winter the water about Nome is frozen solid some two miles out to sea. All garbage and junk is hauled out upon the ice with dog-teams and dumped there. When spring comes the ice loosens from the shore, and, laden with its great cargo of unwanted things, carries it through Bering Straits to haunt the Arctic Ocean, perhaps for years to come. It is moved hither and yon until time and tide and many storms have at last ground it into oblivion.

The long Arctic twilight had begun to fall when the two girls, hungry and weary, but happily laden with many treasures which were to make life more possible on their floating palace of ice, made their way toward their camp.

Besides scraps of wood enough for two or three small fires, and cooking utensils of various sorts, they had found salt, a part of a box of pepper, and six cans of condensed milk which had doubtless been frozen several times but had never been opened.

"We could live a week," said Lucile exultantly, "even if we didn't have another bit of good luck."

"Yes-s," said Marian slowly, "but let's hope we don't have to; I'm afraid I'd get awful hungry."

They dined that night, quite happily, on a third of their duck, soup made of duck's broth and condensed milk, and half of a pilot biscuit.

"Oh, Marian," said Lucile, as she thought of sleep, "that kiak's so crowded when we sleep there."

"Yes-s," said Marian, thoughtfully, "it is. I wonder if we couldn't make a sleeping-bag?"

At once needles and some sinew thread found in the native's hunting bag were gotten out, the four deerskins were spread out, two on the bottom and two on top, with the fur side inside, and they went to work with a will to fashion a rude sleeping-bag.

Their fingers shook with the chill wind that swept across the ice and their eyelids drooped often in sleep, yet they persevered and at last the thing was complete.

"Are you sure it won't be cold?" said Lucile, who had never slept in a sleeping-bag.

"Oh, no, I know it won't," Marian assured her. "I've heard my father tell of spreading his on the frozen ground when it was thirty below zero, and sleeping snug as a 'possum in a hollow tree."

"All right; let's try it," and Lucile spread the bag on the sealskin square.

After removing their skirts and rolling them up for pillows, together they slid down into the soft, warm depths of their Arctic bed.

"Um-m," whispered Marian.

"Um-m," Lucile answered back. And the next moment they were both fast asleep.

All through the night they slept there with the Great Dipper circling around the North Star above them, and with the ice-floe carrying them, who could tell where?

The two following days were spent in fruitless hunting for wild duck and in making trips to the rubbish pile. These trips netted nothing of use save armfuls of wood which helped to add a cheery tone to their camp. Though the fog held on, the nights grew bitterly cold. They were glad enough to creep into their sleeping-bag as soon as it grew dark. There for hours they lay and talked of many things: Of the land to which the ice-floe might eventually bring them, the people who would be living there, and the things they would have to eat. Then, again, they would talk of school days, and the glad, good times that now seemed so far away. Of one subject they never spoke; never once did one wonder to the other what their families were doing in their far-away homes. They did not dare. It would have been like singing "Home Sweet Home" to the American soldiers on the fields of France.

The second day's tramp to the rubbish pile brought them a great surprise. They were busily searching through the piles of cans for a possible one that had not been opened, when Lucile, happening to hear a noise behind her, looked up. The next instant, with a startled whisper, which was almost a cry, "Marian! Quick!" she seized Marian by the arm and dragged her around an ice-pile.

"Wha—what is it?" whispered the startled Marian.

"Bear!"

* * * * * *

At this very moment, on another section of that same vast floe, Phi lay flat on his stomach, his eye traveling the length of his rifle barrel. His brow was wrinkled. He moved uneasily, as a gambler moves who would risk all on one throw of the dice but does not quite dare.

He shook the benumbed fingers of his right hand, then gripped the rifle once more. His forefinger was on the trigger. He had arrived at a crisis. He was half starved and freezing. For three days now he had wandered over the vast expanse of ice-pans that covered the waters of Bering Straits. During that three days he had secured only two small birds, dovekies they were, birds who linger all winter in the Arctic. These he had shared with Rover.

From the moment the snow-fog had settled down upon him and the break in the ice-floe had blocked his way so effectively, he had wandered about without knowing where he was going. The ice-floe constantly drifting, first this way, then that, may have carried him east, west, north, south. Who could tell where? Who could guess his position on the surface of the ocean at the present moment?

A brown seal was the cause of his excitement now. The seal, lying asleep upon the ice-pan before him, must weigh something like seventy pounds. This was meat enough to last him and his dog many days.

He was not a good shot and knew it. He had wandered over the ice-floes of the ocean at times with a rifle under his arm, yet never before had he stalked a seal. Only the grimmest necessity could have induced him to do so now. There was something altogether too human in those bobbing brown heads as they appeared above the water or lifted to gaze about them on the ice. But now his need and the need of the dog demanded prompt action.

Two things made a perfect shot a necessity: The seal was sleeping beside his hole; if he was not killed instantly he would drop into the hole and be lost to the hunter. And this was the last cartridge in the rifle. The two birds had cost him four shots. The seal must be secured by his last one. There seemed a certain irony about a fate which would allow him to waste his ammunition on small birds, then offer him such a prize as this with only one shot to win.

He knew well enough how to stalk a seal; he had watched the Eskimos do it many times. Lying flat on your stomach, you cautiously creep forward. Every moment or two you bob your head up and down in imitation of a seal awakened and looking about. If your seal is awake, since his eyesight is poor he will take you for a member of his own species and will go back to sleep again.

Knowing all this, Phi had dragged himself a hundred feet across the ice, without disturbing the seal. Only fifty feet remained, yet to his feverish brain this seemed too great a distance. Seeing his seal bobbing his head, he bobbed in turn, then, when the seal had dozed off again, continued his crawl.

He had made another six yards when, with a sudden resolve, he slid the rifle forward, lifted it to position, glanced steadily along its barrel, then pulled the trigger.

There followed a metallic snap, then a splash, The rifle had missed fire; the seal had dropped into its pool.

For a moment the boy lay there motionless, stunned by the realization that he was still without food and was now powerless to procure any.

"Well, anyway it was luck for the seal," he smiled uncertainly. "It sure was his lucky day!"

Rising unsteadily, he put two fingers to his mouth and uttered a shrill whistle. From behind a towering ice pile, Rover, gaunt and miserable yet unmistakably a white man's dog, and, by his bearing, a one time leader of the team, came limping toward him.

"Well," the boy said, patting the dog, "it's hard luck, but we don't eat. It's harder for you than for me, for you are old and I'm young, but somehow—somehow, we'll have to manage. If only we knew. If only—"

He stopped abruptly and his eyes opened wide. Off to the left of them, like a giant fist thrust through the fog, there had appeared the dark bulk of a granite cliff.

"Land, Rover, land!" he muttered hoarsely.

The next moment, utterly overcome with excitement, he sank weakly to the surface of the ice-pan.

"This won't do," he said cheerily, after a brief period of rest. "Rover, old boy, we must be traveling. If the ice is crowding that shore, which it must be from the feel of the wind, there's a chance for us yet."



CHAPTER XIV

A LONESOME ISLAND

After fleeing from the great white bear, the two girls crouched behind the ice pile with bated breath. Expecting at any moment to see the long neck of the gigantic beast thrust around the corner of the ice pile, they longed to flee, yet, not daring, remained crouching there.

"Do you think he saw us?" Marian whispered.

"No. He was snuffing around looking for something to eat."

Marian shivered.

Lucile worked her way about the ice-pile to a point where she could see through a crack between cakes, then she motioned Marian to join her. Together they watched the antics of the clumsy white bear.

"My! Isn't it huge!" whispered Marian.

For a time the bear amused himself by knocking rusty ten-gallon gasoline cans about. At last, seeming to scent something, he began tearing up a particular garbage pile. Presently a huge rat ran out and went scurrying away. There followed a lively chase which ended in a prolonged squeal.

"He got him!" Marian shivered.

The bear had moved out of their view. Cautiously, they turned and made their way from ice-pile to ice-pile, from the rubbish heap toward camp.

"I hope he doesn't get our scent and follow us," said Lucile. "They don't usually bother people much, though."

In spite of her belief that the bear would not harm them, Lucile did not sleep well that night. "You can never tell what a hungry bear might do," she kept saying over and over to herself.

At last, late in the night, she fell asleep and slept soundly until morning. When finally she did awake, it was with the feeling that somehow something had changed.

"Land! Land!" something seemed to be whispering to her. It could have been nothing short of intuition which gave her this suggestion. They had been riding on the surface of a gigantic ice-floe. It was, perhaps, twenty miles wide by a hundred long. There was no sense of motion. So silent was its sweep, one might imagine oneself to be upon land; yet, as she crept quickly out of her sleeping-bag, she saw at once that the motion of the floe was arrested and off to the right she read the reason. A narrow stretch of rocky shore there cast back the first rays of the morning sun.

"Marian! Marian!" she called excitedly. "Land! Land! An island!"

There could be no questioning this great good fortune. The one remaining problem was to reach the shore of that island. They did not dare to abandon their kiak, sleeping-bag, and scanty supplies, for who could tell them that this was not a small uninhabited island? They had traveled many miles with the ice-floe in some direction, perhaps many directions. Who could say where they were now?

"The ice must be piling close to shore," said Lucile, "but we must try it. It's our only chance."

After a hasty breakfast of tea and a last remaining bit of cold duck, they piled all their supplies and equipment into the kiak, then, bidding farewell to the humble ice-pan which had given them such a long ride, they began dragging the kiak toward the island.

This proved a long and tedious task, requiring all the skill and strength they possessed, for the island, though scarcely four miles in length, had appeared to be much closer than it really was. The ice-piles, too, grew rougher and more uneven as they advanced. When they neared the shore, they found themselves in infinite peril, for the ice was piling. Here a huge cake a hundred feet across and eight feet thick glided without a sound, up—up, into mid-air, at last to crumble and fall; and here a mass of small cakes were thrown into convulsions.

Pick their way as they might with greatest care, they were more than once in danger of being crushed by overhanging ice-pans, or of being plunged into a dark pool of water.

When, at length, in triumph, they dragged their kiak to a rocky shelf well above the trembling ice, Marian, from sheer exhaustion, threw herself flat upon the rock and lay there motionless for some time. Lucile sat beside her absorbed in thought.

At last Marian sat up. "Well, we're here," she smiled, giving her blistered hands a woeful look.

"Yes," smiled Lucile, "we're here. Now where is 'here' and what's it like?"

The two girls looked at one another solemnly for a full minute. In their larder was still a little tea, a pint bottle of weak duck soup, a half-can of much frozen condensed milk—and that was all. They were on an island of which as yet they knew nothing. Above them towered great, overhanging cliffs. Before them the giant ice-pans rose, crumbling and creaking in mad turmoil.

"Life is so strange," said Lucile, at length; then energetically: "Let's make some soup of the things we have left. Then, if we can get up there, we'll explore our island. We'll have three or four hours of daylight left, and if there's anything for us to eat anywhere, the sooner we find it out the better."

The climb to the top of the island, which they undertook an hour later, was scarcely less dangerous than had been the struggle to cross the tumbling ice-floe, for this island was little more than a gigantic granite bowlder rising for a distance of some five hundred feet out of the sea.

They crept along a narrow shelf where a slip on some pebble might send them crashing to death in the tumbled mass of ice below. They scaled an all but perpendicular wall, to drag their sleeping-bag and the few other belongings, which they had dared attempt to carry, after them by the aid of a skin-rope. Then, after a few minutes' rest, they would rise to climb again.

But at last, their efforts rewarded, they found themselves standing on the edge of a snow-capped plateau. "Now," said Lucile, "if there are any people living on the island, it won't be on top of it, but in some sheltered cranny down by the shore where they are away from the sweeping winds and where they can hunt and fish."

"But think what they may be like!" said Marian. "They may be savages who have never seen a white man. We don't even know whether we are a hundred miles from Bering Straits or five hundred. And neither of us has ever been on an island in the Arctic Ocean!"

"That," said Lucile, "has nothing to do with it. We're on one now. We can't very well go back to the ocean ice. We haven't any food. We couldn't hide on this little island if we wished to. So the best thing to do is to try to find the people, if there are any, and cast our lot with them. I once heard a great bishop say that 'humanity is everywhere very much the same.' We've just got to believe that and go ahead."

Shouldering the sleeping-bag, and leaving to Marian the remaining seal-oil in the skin-sack, the butcher knife, and the fishing outfit, she marched steadily forward on a course which in time would enable them to make the outer circle of the island.

"See those piles of stones?" Lucile said fifteen minutes later. "Those did not just happen to be there. They were put there by men. See how carefully they are piled. The piles look tall and slim. I have heard a sea captain say that the natives of this coast, in very early days, when there was warring among tribes, piled stones on high points like this to make those who desired to attack them think they were men, and that there were many warriors in the place."

"Then," said Marian, catching her breath at the thought, "there must be people on this island."

"Not for sure," said Lucile. "The people who piled up those rocks might merely have been living here temporarily, using this island as a hunting station; and then, even if they were living here permanently, famine and contagious diseases may have killed all of them off."

They trudged on again in silence. Everywhere the rocky rim of the island frowned up at them, offering no suggestion of a path down to the foot, or of a rocky shelf below where a group of hunters might build a village.

"There's a place somewhere," said Lucile stoutly, as she lowered her burden to the snow and paused for a brief rest. "There's a path down and we must find it, if it's nothing more than to find a safe spot by the sea where we can fish for smelt, tomcod and flounders."

Dusk was falling when, at length, with a little cry of joy, Lucile sprang forward, then began a cautious descent over a winding and apparently well-worn trail which even the snow did not completely conceal.

With hearts beating wildly, in utter silence they made their way down, down the winding way—to what? That, they could not tell.

Finally Lucile paused. She caught her breath quickly and clutched at her throat.

At length, in a calmer moment, she pointed down and to the right of the trail.

"See that square of white?"

Marian strained her eyes to peer through the gathering darkness.

"Yes," she said at last, "I see it."

"That," said Lucile in a tone that was tense with emotion, "is the roof of a house—a white man's house!"

"Wha—what makes you think so?" gasped Marian.

"There's nothing as square as that in nature's panorama. And a native does not build a house like that."

"And if it is?"

"If it is, we must trust ourselves to their care, though I'd almost rather they were natives." She closed her eyes and saw again the rough, unkempt white men, beach combers, who lived by trading, hunting and whaling with the natives. They were a hard, bad lot, and she knew it.