The Blue Envelop, St Nicholas, 1922

 

CHAPTER I

MUTINEER'S ISLAND

In the middle of a circular bay, forming a perfect horseshoe, with a sandy beach at its center and a rocky cliff on either side, two boys were fishing for shrimps. The taller of the two, a curly-haired, red-cheeked fellow, was rowing. The other, a short and sturdy lad, now and again lifted a pocket-net of wire-screening, and, shaking a score or more slimy, snapping creatures into one corner of it, seized them and tossed them, still alive, into a kettle of boiling water, which is simply the least cruel and regular way of handling shrimps; cook them on the spot and eat them some time afterward.

Both boys had the clear, ruddy complexion which comes from clean living and frequent sallies into the out-of-doors. Hugh Clarkston, the tall youth of the curly hair, was something of a student; his cousin. Booth Tucker, had been born for action and adventure.

"Look—look!" exclaimed Hugh, suddenly. "What's that out at the entrance of the bay—bit of drift or a seal?"

"Might be a seal. Watch it bob. It moves, I'd say."

"Take a pot-shot at it." Hugh lifted a light rifle from the bow and passed it to his cousin.

Booth stood with one knee braced on the seat and steadied himself for a shot.

"Dum boat rocks so!" he grumbled, "More waves out there, too. Watch the thing bob!"

"It's gone under!"

"No, there it is!"

"Try it now."

Catching his breath. Booth put his finger to the trigger. For a second the boat was quiet. The brown spot hung on the crest of a wavelet. It was a beautiful target; Booth was a sure shot.

Just as his finger touched the trigger, a strange thing happened—a something which sent the rifle clattering from nerveless fingers and the cold perspiration springing to his forehead.

"Who—who—where d'you suppose he came from?" he was at last able to sputter.

"Who knows?" said Hugh, scanning the sea. Never a mist nor a cloud obscured the vision, yet not a sail nor coil of smoke of nearby craft. "What's more important is—we've got to help him," he said, seizing the oars and rowing vigorously. Booth, having hung the shrimp-trap across the bow, drew a second pair of oars from beneath the seats and joined his cousin in sending the clumsy craft toward the brown spot still bobbing in the water.

The truth was that the brown spot was neither driftwood nor brown seal, but a human being. By some freak of circumstance, the swimmer had chanced to throw a white fore arm high out of the water just as Booth was prepared unwittingly to send a bullet crashing into his skull.

Realizing that this person, whoever he might be, had drifted in the water and was doubtless exhausted, the two boys now bent their backs to the oars in an effort to reach him.

The beach and cliffs back of the bay in which the boys had been fishing were part of the shore-line of a small island which, on this side, faced the open Pacific Ocean, and on the other, the waters of Puget Sound off the coast of the State of Washington.

Nestling among a group of giant yellow pines on a ridge well up from the beach, two white tents gleamed. There was no one about the tents at this moment. The two girls, who but a half-hour before had tidied up the place, had gone for a stroll across a narrow point of land and were at this time separated by a narrow tamarack-filled gully. Marion Norton, the older of the two, had gone back into the woods in search of a particular flaming red flower, which she needed to complete a collection she had been sketching in water-color. Lucile Tucker, her companion, had crossed the point and had come down to the beach. They were to meet on the beach some distance beyond. Lucile was Booth's sister. Marion and Hugh were cousins to the Tuckers and to one another. Marion had lived all her life in the North—for the most part in Nome, Alaska. She had there displayed an unusual talent for art, and had been sent down to the States that she might be taught some of the bewitching secrets of palette and brush. The others had always lived in Anacortes, Washington. "Burl" Tucker, father of Lucile and Booth, was a hard-fisted old seaman, who had turned his mind to codfish and salmon. A small portion of the fortune he had made had been paid for this island, which had always been known as Mutineer's Island. Another small sum had been expended in purchasing a motor-boat. That boat now lay a short way up a narrow stream, which ran from the island into the sea.

The four young people had come to the island for a two weeks' outing. Strange to say, not one of them had ever been here before, and, as far as they knew, they were the only persons on the island. Swept as it was by the furious storms which came tearing in from the open sea, this island would never have become a popular summer camping-place, even had Burl Tucker encouraged it, which he decidedly did not. The island was thickly wooded. This timber, with the price of lumber steadily mounting, was worth a fortune. He could not afford to risk losing it by a fire scattered by careless campers.

It had been only after countless pleadings that his son and daughter, together with his favorite nephew and niece, had prevailed upon him to permit them to spend their vacation here. In the mind of this man of the sea there appeared to exist a lurking feeling, perhaps of dread—one scarcely could tell what—regarding this island.

As Lucile, his daughter, now strolled along the beach, she shared something of this dread. She was thinking of stories her father had told—wild tales of earlier days. The island had earned its name,—Mutineer's Island,—for in those early, rough days on Puget Sound, when a man, or group of men, became unmanageable aboard a fishing-craft, they had been dumped with little ceremony on this island, supplied with a box of pilot-bread and a side of bacon, and left here for an indefinite period to repent at leisure.

Lucile shivered as she remembered the tales her father had told her. As she shrank back into the dark depths of a clump of tamarack growing down to the very shore of the sea, she seemed to hear the complaining groan of an oarlock, as a dory drew toward shore. She seemed to see the square-rigger ride the waves on the horizon, and then, close in, the faces of men. Blear-eyed, with faces bruised and gashed from beatings too honestly earned, she saw them land; saw the pilot-bread and bacon tossed on the shore; heard the oarlocks groan again on the return to the ship.

A cloud passed over the sun. The shadows took on the inkiness of night. A shiver shot down her spine. Her brain suddenly seemed paralyzed with fear. Wild imaginings controlled her mind. Her father had been a roaring tyrant in the day when roaring tyrants were considered necessary on the sea. Were the deeds of that father to be visited on his daughter? Why had she induced the others to join her in this wild and deserted retreat?

She knew the answer in a second. It was because Mutineer's Island had always held for her a curious and weird fascination. This fascination had at last drawn her to its shores. Now a vague premonition seemed to tell her that strange adventures awaited her here. As she stepped once more out upon the beach she was surprised that the creatures of her day-dreams were mere phantoms of imagination.

On the beach she saw nothing, but as she shaded her eyes and gazed out to sea, she beheld a strange sight: the two boys of her party were lifting a third figure into their boat. The distance was great. They were but dimly outlined against the sky, yet, even so, she caught the gleam of the sun reflected from the body of the person being rescued, and realized that he was without clothing.

She scanned the horizon for a sail. There was none. She turned to look up the beach and encountered the gaze of her cousin Marion.

"Look!" she said, a wild gleam of terror in her eyes; "they are more cruel now than in those other days. They used to put them ashore with clothes and food, but now they throw them into the sea and allow them to save themselves if they can."

"What utter nonsense!" exclaimed Marion. "What in the world are you talking about?"

For answer, Lucile pointed toward the boat. A moment later she drew her cousin into the shadows and, sitting down on a moss-covered log, told her all the wild thoughts that had sped through her mind.

"Cheer up, dear," and her cousin threw an arm about her, "these shadows and the wild stories about the place have unnerved you. You'll be all right after a good supper. As for that unfortunate chap out there, he probably was caught in a squall while out in a canoe."

"Canoe!" exclaimed Lucile; "there isn't a camp nor a cottage within fifteen miles!"

"Anyway, he's had a mishap and may be ill from the overstrain and exposure. The boys may need us when they get him to camp. Come on!"

"BOOTH STOOD WITH ONE KNEE BRACED ON THE SEAT AND STEADIED HIMSELF FOR A SHOT"

The girls had wandered a long way from camp. Arriving there finally, quite out of breath, they found the boat drawn up on the beach. Hugh was adding fuel to the open fire, over which a kettle was already beginning to steam. Booth was hastily plucking the feathers from a Chinese pheasant, while the stranger lay rolled in a blanket with his face to the fire.

"Going to make him some broth," explained Booth, tossing a handful of feathers to the wind; "must be mighty weak. He swam a long way from somewhere, I'd say."

Lucile stole a glance at the stranger's face. She started.

"Why, he's only a boy!" she whispered.

"Something like that," Booth mumbled. "You don't have to be so careful to whisper, though. His Nibs doesn't speak our language, it seems, nor any other that we know anything about. Mighty curious, I'd say."

"Jap trying to smuggle in?"

"Maybe."

"He doesn't seem exactly Oriental," said Lucile, looking closely at his face.

With his eyes closed as if in sleep, the boy did not, indeed, seem to resemble perfectly any of the many types Lucile had chanced to meet. There was something of the clean brown, the perfect curve of the classic young Italian; something of the smoothness of skin native to the Anglo-Saxon; yet there was, too, the round face, the short nose, the slight angle at the eyes which spoke of the Oriental.

"He looks like the Eskimo we have on the streets of Nome," suggested Marion, "only he's too light-complexioned. Couldn't be, anyway."

"Fine chance!" laughed Booth; "come two thousand miles in a skin kayak to be spilled out in a calm sea. Fine chance, I'd say."

"Whoever he is, he's some swimmer," commented Hugh. "When we reached him, he was a mile from any land, with the sea bearing shoreward, and there wasn't a sail or steamer in sight."

The four of them now busied themselves with preparing the evening meal, and for a time forgot their strange, uninvited guest.

When Lucile next looked his way she caught his eyes upon her in a wondering stare. They were at once shifted to the kettle, from which there now issued savory odors of boiling fowl.

"He's hungry all right," she smiled.

When the soup was ready to serve they were treated to a slight shock. The bird had been carefully set on a wooden plate to one side. The strange boy was offered only the broth. This he sniffed for a moment, then, placing it carefully on the ground, seized the bird and, holding it by the drum-sticks, began to gnaw at its breast.

"I'll say he's hungry," grinned Booth; "don't know as a full meal is good for him, but here goes."

He set a plate of boiled potatoes before him. The boy paused to stare, then to point a finger at them, and exclaimed:

"Uba canok!"

"Bet he never ate 'em!" exclaimed Hugh, suddenly. "What sort of chap must he be?"

He broke a potato in half and took a taste.

At once a broad smile spread over the brown boy's face as he proceeded to add the potatoes to his bill of fare.

"I see where you girls will have to start all over getting this meal," grinned Booth; "our guest has turned into a host."

When at last the strange boy's hunger was relieved, Booth took him to his tent and outfitted him with a pair of khaki trousers and a blue-checked shirt. These were much too large, but by dint of much turning up at ankles and wrists were made presentable.

Two blankets were given him, and motions made to indicate that he might sleep in the tent. To this he paid no attention. Wandering back to his old place beside the fire, he wrapped the blankets about him, and, with hands crossed over his ankles, with face drooped forward, he slept.

"Queer sort of chap!" exclaimed Booth. "I'd say he was an Indian, if Indians lived that way; but they don't, and haven't for some generations. Our little brown man appears to have walked from out another age."

That night, before she fell asleep beside her cousin in their tent, Lucile pondered long about the stranger who had come into their camp. The island they were on was her father's island; the boat they had come in, her boat. It was her party. She, more than the others, was responsible for the boy. If an attempt was being made to smuggle him into the country, and the attempt was rendered successful through their actions, she could blame no one but herself. Yet he did not look entirely like an Oriental; he did not act the part of one. What should be done? How had he come in the sea? Where were those who had brought him? All at once she shivered. "Were they in danger from other strangers?" She thought of rising and asking the boys to set a watch; yet that seemed foolish. There was only that silent figure by the fire, and he was wrapped in deep sleep.

In time she too fell asleep. How long she slept she could not tell. She awoke with a start, half conscious of the fact that she had heard a muffled shout.

Lifting the flap of the tent, she stared at the place by the fire. It was vacant! The brown boy was gone!

"Hugh! Booth!" she cried loudly, "Hugh! Booth! He's gone. The brown boy's gone!"

"Let him go. Who wants him?" Booth growled sleepily.

At that instant Lucile's keen ears caught the groan of oar-locks, and her wild day-dream flashed once more before her mind's eye.

"But I hear oars," she whispered hoarsely. "They've come for him. Some one has carried him away. I heard him try to cry for help. We must stop them."

At once the camp was in commotion.

"Think we better try to follow 'em?" said Hugh, as he struggled into his shoes, wrapping the laces round and round his ankles for the sake of speed.

"Don't know. Pretty tough lot, probably. Mighty mysterious. Better take our rifles."

"Ye-ah."

In a moment the boys were racing for the beach. They were followed by the girls. As they paused, out of breath, to listen, they heard no sound. Either the intruders had rounded the point or had stopped rowing. Booth threw the circle of his flash-light out to sea.

"Stop that!" cried Hugh, in alarm. "They might take a shot at us."

"Let 'em," growled Booth, now thoroughly out of humor. "What's it all about, anyway?"

"Boys, look!" cried Lucile, suddenly; "Our boat's gone!"

Hastening down the beach, they found it was all too true; the row-boat had disappeared.

"There weren't any men!" exclaimed Hugh, with sudden conviction; "That chap's taken our boat and skipped!"

"Yes, there were men," insisted Lucile. "We saw their tracks in the sand, didn't we, Marion?"

"Yes, boys; come back here and you'll see."

An inspection of the sand showed three sets of footprints leading to the water's edge, where the stolen boat had been launched.

"There's one queer chap among them," said Hugh, after studying the marks closely; "he limps; one step is long and one short, also one shoe is smaller than the other. We'd certainly know that chap if we ever saw him."

"Listen!" said Booth, suddenly.

Out of the silence that ensued there came the faint pop-pop-pop of a motor-boat.

"Behind the point," said Hugh.

"Our motor-boat!" whispered Booth.

Instantly there was a rush down the beach, then up the creek. Tripped by creeping vines, torn at by underbrush, swished by wet ferns, they in time arrived at the point where the motor-boat had been moored.

"Gone!" whispered Lucile.

"Framed, as I live!" hissed Booth, savagely. "Framed by a boy—a half-breed at that. He was a plant. They left him swimming in the sea so we'd find him. That's why he slept by the fire. As soon as we were asleep, he sneaked out and towed the schooner down the river, then he flashed a signal and the rest came in for him. Probably Indians and half-breeds. Dirty dogs! Might have left us a row-boat, at least."

With early dawn streaking the sky, the four of them sat down to consider. They were on a deserted island with, perhaps, two weeks' provisions. Fish and game might lengthen this out a bit. They were to have remained here a month; buying provisions at a fishing-town fifteen miles away. Now what was to be done?

"We'd better go down the beach with our rifles, you and I," said Booth to Hugh. "They might have engine trouble, or something, and be obliged to land; then perhaps we could catch them off their guard."

"It's the only thing we can do," said Hugh. "It's a good thing we had the rifles in our tent, and the grub too, or they'd have stripped us clean."

"Speaking of grub," said Booth, "I'm half-starved. What say we eat?"

By the time the morning sun had set the sea a-glimmering, the two boys were away along the beach in the direction from whence had come the pop-popping of their motor-boat.

Coming at last to the place where sandy shore was replaced by ragged boulders, they began making their way through the tangled mass of underbrush, fallen tree-trunks, and ferns, across the point of land which cut them off from the next sandy beach.

"This would be great, if it wasn't so darn serious," said Hugh, as they at last reached the crest of the ridge and prepared to descend. "Always did like roaming about in an unexplored wilderness. Look at that fallen yellow pine, eight feet through if it is an inch—and the ferns are almost tall enough to hide it; and look at those black knights, the tamaracks, down in that gully. Wouldn't they make a picture?"

"Ow! come on," exclaimed Booth, who already had his fill of this jungle. "Let's get down to the beach and see what's there. When we get there, don't go whoopin' out into the open. There's a long stretch of beach, I think, maybe half a mile. We might discover something. Who knows?"

To descend a rock-ribbed hill, overgrown by tangled underbrush and buried in decaying tree-trunks, is hardly easier than the ascent. Both boys were thoroughly fagged as they at last parted the branches of a fir-tree and peered through to where the beach, a yellow ribbon of sand, circled away to the north.

"No chance," whispered Hugh.

"What's that two thirds of the way down, at the water's edge?" asked Booth.

"Don't know. Rock, maybe. Anyway, it's not our motor-boat."

"No, it's not. Worth looking into, though. Let's go."

Eagerly they hurried along over the hard-packed sand. The tide was ebbing and the beach was like a floor. Their steps quickened as they approached the object. At last, less than half conscious of what they were doing, they broke into a run. The thing they had seen was a boat. And a boat, to persons in their position, was a thing to be prized.

Arrived at its side, they looked it over for a moment in silence.

"Not much of a tub, but seaworthy," was Booth's verdict.

"It's theirs. Thought it wasn't worth risking a stop for."

"But how'd they get into our camp? We haven't seen their tracks through the brush."

"Probably went up one small stream and down another."

The boat they had discovered was a wide-bottomed, heavy affair, such as is used by fishermen in tending pond-nets. It was equipped with two pairs of stubby oars.

"We'll follow round the beach in this boat," said Booth; "might catch them yet."

For two hours they rowed steadily. Point after point, each with its little circle of beach, they passed, with no sign of a boat drawn up on the shore. They had begun to despair of the search when, on rounding a point, Hugh dropped an oar and, gripping Booth's arm, pointed toward a distant beach.

"It's her; our schooner!" he exclaimed.

Fifteen minutes of hard rowing brought them in behind the point, where they anchored the boat. An hour of struggling through the underbrush, and they came into view of the beach. Footprints on the sand, some of them made by the man with the deformed foot, told them they were on the right trail. There was no sign of life about the motor-boat, which was still some distance away.

"Maybe they're asleep," whispered Booth. "We'd better sneak up through the brush."

When at last they peered through the last brush screen, they saw that the men were worse than asleep; they were in a drunken stupor. The empty bottles about them told that.

"We'll get the boat and skip," whispered Booth. "They'll find their own boat soon enough."

They were gliding past the men, who lay sprawled out upon the ground, when one of them half rose on his elbows.

Hugh gasped. It was the strange boy of the previous day. He would cry out. The game was up.

But the boy did nothing of the kind. He merely bobbed his head in a strange set of gestures. Then it was that Booth noticed that he was bound hand and foot.

"Lucile was right," he whispered. "He's not a rascal, but a captive."

A moment later his knife flashed. His bonds cut, the boy leaped to his feet and led the way to the beach. Five minutes later they were pop-popping round the point.

"Now what do you think of that?" exclaimed Booth, at last.

"I don't think," said Hugh.

They found the two girls anxiously waiting their arrival.

"Now we have him again," said Booth, "I suggest that we pack up and take him to Port Townsend, where he can be classified; then we can hunt up a safer camping-ground."

The suggestion was acted upon, and a short time after, they found themselves nearing the port.

Much to their surprise, they found a large steamer tied up at the wharf. It proved to be a revenue cutter that had just returned from her trip to Alaska. On the wharf a broad-shouldered, sun-tanned man walked up and down. As the brown boy sprang ashore from the motor-boat, this man shot him a question in a strange tongue. With a broad grin, the boy answered him in the same language. For some time the two carried on a rapid-fire conversation.

At last the stranger turned to the four young people.

"Mighty queer case," he smiled, "this boy was shanghaied by the crew of some whaler. I can't make out where he came from—north of Russia or somewhere. They treated him so badly that he at last, in desperation, leaped overboard, intending to swim ashore. He tells me that you rescued him and were very, kind to him, that he was then recaptured by two members of the crew sent to search for him, but that you found and saved him; very commendable action, I should say and I congratulate you."

"'Twasn't much," said Booth, speaking for them all; "just a bit of good adventure, that's all."

"I," said the stranger, "am an anthropologist. I study the origins of the types of men. I have just returned from the North. I had hoped to persuade a native to return with me so that I might present him to my fellow-students and use him as living evidence in a set of lectures I have prepared. This boy tells me that since it will be impossible for him to be returned to his home before next spring, he is willing to go with me. I will pledge to return him to Cape Prince of Wales in June. He can doubtless find his way home from there. What say? Do I get him?"

Out of deference, he had turned to the girls.

"He—doesn't belong to us," smiled Lucile. "I'm sure it will be all right."

So it was arranged. Soon the motor-boat was carrying the four of them to a quiet camping-ground.

"I wonder," said Lucile, "if we shall ever see our 'Man Friday' again."

Had she known under what strange circumstances and in what an unknown land she and Marion were, many months later, to see him, the smile on her happy face might have been more doubtful in its expression of joy.

(To be continued)

CHAPTER II

THE MYSTERIOUS PHI BETA CHI

A year and a half had passed, when, on the day of the beginning of our second mysterious episode, Marion found herself in a spot even more interesting than Mutineer's Island. From where she stood, brushes and palette in hand, she could see a broad stretch of drifting ice, which chained the restless arctic sea at Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska. She gloried in all the wealth of light and shadow that lay like a changing panorama before her. She thrilled at the thought of the mighty forces that shifted the massive ice-floes as they drifted from nowhere to nowhere. Now, for the thousandth time, she stood spellbound before it.

Suddenly the spell was broken. Throwing up her hands in wild glee, she exclaimed, "The mail! The mail!"

The coming of the carrier was, indeed, a great event in this out-of-the-way spot. Once a month he came whirling around the point, behind a swift-footed dog-team. He came unheralded. Conditions of snow and storm governed his time of travel, yet come he always did.

No throng greeted his arrival. No eager crowd hovered about the latticed window waiting for the mail to be "made up." If a dozen letters were in the sack, that was what might be expected.

But these had come eighteen hundred miles by dog-team. Precious messages they were. To-morrow, perhaps a bearded miner would drop in from Tin City, which was a city only in name. This lone miner would claim one of the letters. Two perhaps would go to another on Saw Tooth Mountain. Next week, an Eskimo, happening down from Shishmaref Island, seventy-five miles north, would take three letters to Ben Norton and his sister, the government teachers for Eskimos. Two would go into a well-filled pigeonhole, which was consigned to Thompson, the teacher on the Little Diomede Island, twenty-two miles across the drifting ice. Later, a native would be paid ten sacks of flour for attempting to cross the floe and deliver the contents of that box. There might be the scrawled note of some Eskimo, a stray letter or two, and the rest would be for Marion. At the present moment, she was the only white person at Cape Prince of Wales, a little town of three hundred and fifty Eskimos.

Marion was substituting for the government school-teacher, her cousin Lucile, while the latter was away at Nome helping the natives dispose of their reindeer meat.

Both girls had finished high school, when strange open doors had appeared before them. Lucile, who had always felt a wild desire to spend a year in the Arctic, had been offered the teaching position at Wales; Marion, who, since very early childhood, had spent all her time with brushes and paints, had been given a wonderful commission. It came from that very anthropologist who had relieved them of their responsibility toward the strange boy who came swimming to them from the sea. She was to spend the winter with her cousin at Cape Prince of Wales and was to make sketches of the natives and of their homes—sketches which would be preserved for all time, to tell the story of a fast-vanishing race. And here she was at this moment, "painting her finger-tips off."

"Pretty light this time," smiled the grizzled mail-carrier, as he reached the cabin at the top of the hill, "mebby ten letters."

The carrier launched at once into a recital of coast gossip. Marion did not hear him. Gossip did not interest her. Besides, she had found a letter that interested her even more than those addressed to her. A very careful penman had drawn the Greek letters Phi Beta Chi on the outside of an envelop, and beneath it had written, 'Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska.'

She was on the point of sharing the mystery with the carrier, but checked herself. Just some new gossip for him was her mental comment.

"Here's the sack," she said, noting that he had finished drinking the coffee she had prepared for him.

"Phi Beta Chi," Marion pronounced the letters softly to herself as the door closed. "Now who could that be?"

She was still puzzling over the mysterious letter when, after a hasty luncheon, she again took up her palette and brushes and wound her way around the hill to a point where a cabinet, perhaps ten feet square and made of fiber-board, stood.

Here, protected from the keen arctic wind, she had been making a sketch of the village. She resumed her work, yet, interested as she was in it, her curiosity kept dragging her back to that letter in the pigeonhole up in the cabin.

She was deep in the mystery of it when a voice startled her. It came from back of the cabinet.

"I say," the voice sang cheerily, "have you any letters in your little post-office on the hill?"

The voice thrilled her. It was new and sounded young.

"WITH DEFT FINGERS, DREW WITH CHARCOAL THE CHARACTERS."

"Yes," she said, throwing open the back of the cabinet and standing up. "We have, quite—quite a variety."

The visitor was young, not more than twenty, she thought.

"What color?" she said teasingly, as she stepped from her cabinet.

"Blue," he said seriously.

"Blue?" She started. The mysterious letter was blue; the only blue one she had seen for months.

"What name?"

"Well, you see," the young man flushed, "Not—not any real name; just the Greek letters, Phi Beta Chi."

He stepped into the cabinet and, with deft fingers, drew with charcoal the characters.

"Like that," he smiled.

"Yes," she smiled back, "there is one."

"Grand!" he exclaimed; "let's get it at once, shall we?"

They hastened up the hill. Marion wondered at herself, as she handed out the letter; wondered that she did not question him further to make sure he was really the rightful owner. There was something free and frank about his bearing. It disarmed suspicion.

After he had read the letter, she thought she caught a look of disappointment on his face. If she did, it quickly vanished.

While she was dispensing the accustomed hospitality of the Northland—a steaming plate of "mulligan" and a cup of coffee—she felt the boy's eyes resting upon her many times.

When at last he had finished eating, he turned and spoke hesitatingly;

"I—I'd like to ask a favor of you."

"All right."

"If another letter like that one comes to me here, you keep it for me, will you?"

"Why, yes, only I won't be here much longer. I'm going to Nome after the 'breakup.'"

"I'm going north. I'll be back before then. But if I'm not, you keep it, will you?"

There was a tense eagerness about him that stirred her strongly.

"Why, yes,—I—I—guess so. But what shall I do if you don't get back before I leave?"

"Take it with you. Leave word where I can find you, and take it."

"You see," he half apologized, after a moment's thought, "these northern P.O.'s change hands so much, so many people handle the mail, that I—I'm afraid I might lose one of these letters, and—and—they're mighty important; at least, one of them is going to be. Will you do it? I—I think I'd trust you—though I don't just know why."

"Yes,—" Marion said slowly, "I'll do that."

Three minutes later she saw him skilfully disentangling his dogs and sending them on their way.

"What's all the mystery, I'd like to know?" she whispered to herself.

She gave a sudden start. For the first time she realized that he had not given her his name.

"And I promised to personally conduct that mysterious mail of his!" she exclaimed under her breath.

CHAPTER III

"FOR HE IS A WHITE MAN'S DOG"

Two months had elapsed since the mysterious college-boy had passed on north with his dog-team.

Many things could have happened to him in those months. As Marion sat looking away at the vast expanse of drifting ice which had been restless in its movements of late, telling of the coming of the spring break-up, she wondered what had happened to the frank-eyed, friendly boy. He had not returned. Had a blizzard caught him and snatched his life away? The rivers were overflowing their banks now, though thick and rotten ice was still beneath the milky water. Had he completed his mission North, and was he now struggling to make his way southward? Or was he securely housed in some out-of-the-way cabin waiting for open water and a schooner?

A letter had come—a letter in a blue envelop and addressed, as was the other, to Phi Beta Chi. That was after Lucile's return. Lucile had been back for a month now. The two girls had laughed and wondered about that letter. They had put it in the pigeonhole, and there it now was. But Marion had not forgotten her promise to take it with her in case the boy did not return before she left the cape.

As she sat dreaming there in the spring sunshine she started suddenly. Something had touched her foot.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, then laughed.

The most forlorn-looking dog she had ever seen had touched her shoe with his nose. His hair was ragged and matted, and his bones protruded at every possible point. His mouth was set awry, one side hanging half open.

"So!" she said, "it's you; you're looking worse than common."

The dog opened his mouth, allowing his long tongue to loll out.

"I suppose that means you're hungry. Well, for once you are in luck. The natives caught a hundred or more salmon through the ice. I have some of them. Fish, old top! Fish! What say?"

The dog stood on his hind legs and barked for joy. He read the sign in her eyes, if he did not understand her lip message. In an other moment he was gulping down a fat, four-pound salmon, while Marion eyed him, a curious questioning look on her face.

"Now," she said, as the dog finished, "the question is, what are we going to do with you? You're an old dog. You're no good in a team—too old; bad feet. No, sir, you can't be any good, or you wouldn't be back here in five days. We gave you to Tommy Illayok to lead his team. You were a leader in your day, all right, and you'd lead 'em yet if you could, poor old soul!" There was a catch in her voice. To her, dogs were next to humans. In the North they were necessary servants as well as friends.

"The thing that makes it hard to turn you out," she went on huskily, "is the fact that you're a white man's dog. Yes, sir! A white man's dog. And that means an awful lot—means you'd stick till death to any white person who'd feed you and call you friend. Jack London has written a book about a white man's dog that turned wild and joined a wolf-pack. It's a wonderful book, but I don't believe it. A white man's dog wants a white man for a friend; and if he loses one, he'll keep traveling until he finds another. That's the way a white man's dog is, and that's why you come back to us." She stooped and patted the shaggy head.

"THAT'S HIM! THAT'S HIM!" THE MAN ALMOST RAVED. "HONEST LOOKIN', YES, HONEST-LOOKIN'! THAT'S HIM!"

"I'll tell you what," she murmured, after a moment's reflection; "if the fish keep running, if the wild ducks come north, or the walrus come barking in from Bering Sea, then you can stay with us and get sleek and fat. You can sleep by our door in the hallway every night; and if any one comes prowling around, you can ask them what they want. How's that?"

The dog howled his approval.

Marion smiled, and, turning, went into the cabin. The dog, evidently an old and decrepit leader, deserted by a faithless master, had adopted their cabin as his foster home.

She had hardly entered the small building when she heard a growl from the dog, followed by the voice of a stranger.

"Down, Rover!" she shouted, as she sprang to the door.

The man who stood before her was badly dressed and unshaven. His eyes bore a shifty gleam.

"Get out, you cur!" He kicked at the dog with his heavy boot.

Marion's eyes flashed, but she said nothing.

"This the post-office?"

"Yes."

"'s there a letter here for me?"

"1 don't know," she smiled. "Won't you come in?"

The man came inside.

"Now," she said, "I'll see. What is your name?"

"Ben—" he hesitated; "oh—that don't matter. Won't be addressed to my name. Addressed like that."

He drew from his pocket a closely folded, dirt-begrimed envelop.

Marion's heart stopped beating. The envelop was blue—yes, the very shade of blue of that other in the pigeonhole. And her eyes did not deceive her; it was addressed with the characters Phi Beta Chi, Nome, Alaska.

"Is there a letter here like that?" The man demanded, squinting at her through bloodshot eyes.

It was a tense moment. What should she say? She loathed the man; feared him, as well. Yet he had asked for the letter and had offered better proof than the mysterious college boy had. What should she say?

"Yes—" she hesitated, "yes—" Her heart beat violently. His searching eyes were upon her. "Yes, there was one. It came two months ago. A young man called for it and took it away."

"You—you gave it to him?"

The man lifted a hand as if to strike her.

There came a growl from the door. Looking quickly, Marion caught the questioning gleam in the old leader's eye.

The man's arm fell.

"Yes," she said stoutly. "I gave it to him. Why should I not? He offered no real proof that he was the right person—"

"Then why—"

"But neither have you," Marion hurried on. "You might have picked that envelop up in the street, or taken it from a waste-paper basket. How do I know?"

"What—what sort of a boy was it?" The man asked more steadily.

"A good-looking, strapping young fellow, with blue eyes and an honest face."

"That's him! That's him!" The man almost raved. "Honest lookin', yes, honest-lookin'! That 'shim! They ain't all honest that looks that way."

Again came the growl from the door.

Marion's eyes glanced uneasily toward the pigeonhole where the latest blue envelop rested. She caught an easy breath. A large white legal envelop quite hid the blue one. "Well, if another one comes, remember it's mine! Mine!" growled the man, as he went stamping out of the room.

"Old Rover," Marion said, taking the dog's head between her hands, "I'm glad you're here. When there are such men as that about, we need you."

And yet, as she spoke, her heart was full of misgivings. What if this man was poor and a bit "crusty," but honest; and what if her good-looking college-boy were a rascal? There in the pigeonhole was the blue envelop. What was her duty?

Pulling on her calico parka, she went for a stroll on the beach. The cool, damp air of arctic twilight by the sea was balm to her perplexed brain. She came back to the cabin with a deep-seated conviction that she was right.

She was not given many days to decide whether she should take the letter with her or leave it. A sudden gale from the south sent the ice-floes rushing through the straits. They hastened away to ports unknown, not to return for months. The little mail-steamer came hooting its way around the point. It brought a letter of the utmost importance to Marion.

While in Nome the summer before, she had made some hasty sketches of the Chukches, natives of the arctic coast of Siberia, while they camped on the beach there on a trading voyage in a thirty-foot skin-boat. These sketches had come to the notice of the ethnological society. They now wrote to her asking that she spend a summer on the arctic coast of Siberia, making sketches of these natives, who, so like the Eskimos, are yet so unlike them in many ways. The pay, they assured her, would be ample; in fact, the figures fairly staggered her. Should she complete this task in safety and to the satisfaction of the society, she would then be prepared to pay her way through a three years' course in one of the best art schools of America. This had long been a cherished dream.

When she had read the letter through, she went for a five-mile walk down the beach. Upon returning, she burst in on her companion.

"Lucile!" she exclaimed, "how would you like to spend the summer in Siberia?"

"Fine! Salt-mine, I suppose?" laughed Lucile. "But I thought all political prisoners had been released by the new Russian Government?"

"I'm not joking," said Marion.

"Explain then."

Marion did explain. At the end of her explanation Lucile had agreed to go. In two weeks her school work would be finished. She would go as Marion's traveling companion and tent-keeper.

"But how'll we go over?" exclaimed Lucile, suddenly.

"Native skin-boat."

"That would be rather thrilling; to cross from the New World to the Old in a skin-boat."

"And safe enough, too," said Marion. "Did you ever hear of a native boat being lost at sea?"

"One. But that one turned up at King's Island, a hundred and fifty miles off its course."

"I guess we could risk it."

"All right; let's go."

Marion sprang to her feet, threw back the blankets to her couch, and fifteen minutes later was dreaming of a tossing skin-boat on a wild sea of walrus monsters and huge white bears.

Her wild dreams did not come true. When the time came to cross the thirty-five miles of water which separates the Old World from the New, they sailed and paddled over a sea as placid as a mill-pond. Here a brown seal bobbed his head out of the water; here a spectacled eider-duck rode up and down on the tiny waves; and here a great mass of tubular seaweed drifted by to remind them that they were really on the bosom of the briny ocean.

Only one incident of the voyage caused them a feeling of vague unrest. A fog had settled down over the sea. They were drifting and paddling slowly forward, when the faint scream of a siren struck their ears. It came nearer and nearer.

"A gasolene schooner," said Marion.

The natives began shouting to avert a possible collision.

Presently the schooner appeared, a dark bulk in the fog.

It took shape. Men were seen on the deck. It came in close by. The waves from it reached the skin-boat.

They were passing with a salute, when a strange thing happened. Rover, the old dog-leader, who had been riding in the prow, standing well forward, as if taking the place of a painted figure-head, suddenly began to bark furiously. At the same time, Marion caught sight of a bearded face framed in a port-hole.

Involuntarily she shrank back out of sight. The next instant the schooner had faded away into the fog. The dog ceased barking.

"What was it?" asked Lucile, anxiously.

"Only a face."

"Who?"

"The man who wanted the blue envelop. Rover recognized him first."

"You don't suppose he knew, and is following?"

"How could he know?"

"But what is he going to Siberia for?"

"Perhaps to trade. They do that a great deal. Let's not talk of it." Marion shivered.

The incident was soon forgotten. They were nearing the Siberian shore which was to be their summer home. A million nesting birds came skimming out over the sea, singing their merry song as if to greet them. They would soon be living in a tent in the midst of a young city of tents. They would be studying a people whose lives are as little known as were the natives in the heart of Africa before the days of Livingstone.

As she thought of these things, Marion's cheeks flushed with excitement.

"What new thrill will come to us here?" her lips whispered.

Had she known, she might have been tempted to turn back.

CHAPTER IV

CAST ADRIFT

There was a shallow space beneath a tray of color-tubes in the very bottom of Marion's paint-box. There, on leaving Cape Prince of Wales, she had stowed the blue envelop addressed to Phi Beta Chi. She had not done this without misgivings. Disturbing thoughts had come to her. Was it the right thing to do? Was it safe! The latter question had come to her with great force when she saw the grizzled miner's face framed in the port-hole of that schooner.

But from the day they landed at Whaling, on the mainland of Siberia, all thoughts of the letter and the two claimants for its possession were completely crowded from her mind. Never in all her adventurous life had Marion experienced anything quite so thrilling as this life with the Chukches of the arctic coast of Siberia.

In Alaska, the natives had had missionaries and teachers among them for thirty years. But here, here where no missionaries had been allowed nor teachers been sent, where gold gleamed still ungathered in the beds of the rivers, here the natives still dwelt in their dome-like houses of poles and skins. Here they fared boldly forth in search of the dangerous walrus and white bear and the monstrous whale. Here they made strange fire to spirits of the monsters that they had slaughtered, and spoke in grave tones of the great spirit that had come down from the moon in the form of a raven with a beak of old ivory.

It is little wonder that Marion forgot all thought of fear amid such surroundings, as she worked industriously at the sketches which were to give her three wonderful years of study under well-known masters.

But one day, after six weeks of this veritable dream-life, as she lifted the tray to her paint-box, her eyes fell on the blue envelop.

Instantly a flood of remembrance rushed through her mind; the frank-faced college-boy, the angry miner, were pictured in her memory. Her hand trembled. She could not control her brush. The sketch she had been working upon went unfinished.

"AS SHE LIFTED THE TRAY, HER EYES FELL ON THE BLUE ENVELOP"

That very evening she had news that disturbed her still more. A native had come from East Cape, the next village to the south. He had seen a white man there, a full-bearded man of middle age. He had said that he intended coming to Whaling in a few days. He had posed among the natives as a spirit-doctor and had, according to reports, worked many wonderful cures by his incantations. Three whales had come into the hands of the East Cape hunters. This was an excellent catch and had been taken as a good omen; the bearded stranger was without doubt highly favored by the spirits of these dead whales.

"I wish our skin-boat would come for us," said Lucile, suddenly, as they talked of it in the privacy of their tent.

"But it won't, not for three weeks yet. That was the agreement."

"I know," said Lucile, resignedly, "the only thing we can do is to wait."

If the East Capers had been favored with three whales, the men of Whaling were not. One lone whale, and that a small one, was their total take. Witch-doctors began declaring that the presence of strange, white-faced women in their midst was displeasing to the spirits of dead whales. The making of the images of the people on canvas was also sure to bring disaster.

As reports of this dissatisfaction came to the ears of the girls, they began straining their eyes for a square sail on the horizon. Still, their boat did not come.

Then came the crowning disaster of the year. The walrus-herd, on which the natives based their last hope, passed south along the coast of Alaska instead of Siberia. Their caches were left empty. Only the winter's supply of white bear and seal could save them from starvation.

"Dezra! Dezra!" ["Enough! Enough!"] the natives whispered among themselves.

The day after the return of the walrus canoes, Marion and Lucile went for a long walk down the beach.

Upon rounding a point in returning, Marion suddenly gave a gasp:

"Look, Lucile! It's gone; our tent!"

"Gone!" murmured Lucile.

"I wonder what,—"

"Look, Marion! the whole village!"

"Let's run."

"Where to? We'd starve in two days, or freeze. Come on. They won't hurt us."

With anxious hearts and trembling footsteps, they approached the solid line of fur-clad figures which stretched along the southern outskirts of the village.

As they came close they heard one word repeated over and over: "Dezra! Dezra!"

And as the natives almost chanted this single word, they pointed to a sled on which the girls' belongings had been neatly packed. To the sled, three dogs were hitched—two young wolf-hounds, with Rover as leader.

"They want us to go," whispered Lucile.

"Yes, and where shall we go?"

"East Cape is the only place."

"And that miner?"

"It may not be he."

Three times Marion tried to press her way through the line. Each time the line grew more dense at the point she approached. Not a hand was laid upon her; she could not go through, that was all. The situation thrilled as much as it troubled her. Here was a people kind at heart, but superstitious. They believed that their very existence depended upon getting rid of these two strangers. What was there to do but go?

They went, and all through the night they assisted the little dog-team to drag the heavy load over the first thin snow of autumn. Over and over again Marion blessed the day she was kind to old Rover because he was a white man's dog; for he was the pluckiest puller of them all.

Just as dawn streaked the east they came in sight of what appeared to be a rude shack built of boards. As they came closer, they could see that some of the boards had been painted and some had not. Some were painted halfway across, and some only in patches of a foot or two. They had been hastily thrown together. The whole effect, viewed at a distance, resembled nothing so much as a crazy-quilt.

"Must have been built from the wreckage of a house," said Lucile.

"Yes, or a boat."

"A boat? Yes, look; there it is out there, quite a large one. It's stranded on the sand-bar and half broken up."

The girls paused in consternation. It seemed they were hedged in on all sides by perils. To go back was impossible. To go forward was to throw themselves upon the mercies of a gang of rough sea-men. To pass around the cabin was only to face the bearded stranger, who, they had reason to believe, was none other than the man who had demanded the blue envelop.

A few minutes' debate brought them to a decision. They would go on to the cabin.

"Mush, Rover! Mush!" Marion threw her tired shoulders into the improvised harness, and once more they moved forward.

It was with wildly beating hearts that they rounded the corner of the cabin and came to a stand by the door.

At once an exclamation escaped their lips:

"Empty! Deserted!"

And so it proved. Snow that had fallen two days before lay piled within the half-open doorway. No sign of occupation was to be found within save a great rusty galley-range, two rickety chairs, an improvised table, two rusty kettles, and a frying-pan.

"They have given the ship up as a total loss and have left in dories or skin-boats," said Marion.

"Yes," agreed Lucile: "They wanted to get across the straits before the coming of the white line."

"The coming of the white line!" Marion started. She knew what that meant far better than Lucile did. She had lived in Alaska longer; had seen it oftener. Now she thought what it would mean if it came before the skin-boat came for them. And that skin-boat? What would happen when it came to Whaling? Would the Chukches tell them in which direction they had gone? And if they did, would the Eskimo boatmen set their sail and go directly to East Cape? If they did, would they miss this diminutive cabin, standing back, as it did, from the shore and seeming a part of the sand-bar?

"We'll put up a white flag, a skirt or something, on the peak of the cabin," she said, half talking to herself.

"Do you think we ought to go right on to East Cape?" said Lucile.

"We can decide that now," said Marion. "We need food and sleep. The dogs need rest."

Some broken pieces of drift were piled outside the cabin. These made a ready fire. They were soon enjoying a feast of fried fish and canned baked beans. Then, with their water-soaked muck-lucks (skin-boots) and stockings hanging by the fire, they threw deer-skins on the rude bunk attached to the wall, and were soon fast asleep.

(To be continued)

CHAPTER V

THE WHITE LINE

Out on the wreck, some two hundred yards from shore, a figure emerged from a small cabin aft. The stern of the ship had been carried completely about by the violence of the waves. It had left this little cabin, formerly the wireless cabin, high and dry.

The person came out upon the deck and scanned the horizon. Suddenly his eyes fell upon the cabin and the strange white signal which the girls had set fluttering there before they went to sleep.

Sliding a native kayak down from the deck, he launched it, then, leaping into the narrow seat, began paddling rapidly toward land.

Having beached his boat, he hurried toward the cabin. His hand was on the latch when he chanced to glance up at the white emblem of distress which floated over his head.

His hand dropped to his side; his mouth flew open. An expression of amazement spread over his face.

"Jumpin' Jupiter!" he muttered beneath his breath.

He beat a hasty retreat. Once in his kayak he made double time back to the wreck.

Marion was the first to awaken in the cabin. By the dull light that shone through the cracks, she could tell that it was growing dark.

Springing from her bunk, she put her hand to the latch. Hardly had she done this when the door flew open with a force that threw her back against the opposite wall. Fine particles of snow cut her face. The wind set every loose thing in the cabin bobbing and fluttering. The skirt they had attached to a stout pole as a signal was booming overhead like a gun.

"Ah! A blizzard!" she groaned.

Seizing the door, she attempted to close it. Twice, the violence of the storm threw her back.

When at last her efforts had been rewarded with success, she turned to rouse her companion. "Lucile! Lucile! Wake up! A blizzard!"

Lucile opened her eyes.

"Wha—wha—" she droned sleepily.

"A blizzard! A blizzard from the north!"

Lucile sat up quickly.

"From the north?" she exclaimed, fully awake in an instant. "The ice?"

"Perhaps."

"And if it comes?"

"We're stuck in Siberia, that's all, for eight or nine months. We won't dare try to cross the straits on the ice. No white man has ever done it, let alone a woman. Well," she smiled, "we've got food for five days, and five days is a long time. We'd better try to bring in some wood and get the dogs in here; they'd freeze out there."

Three days the blizzard raged. Such a storm at this season of the year had not been known on the Arctic for twenty years. The third day broke clear and cold, with the wind still blowing a gale. Lucile was the first to throw open the door. As it came back with a bang, something fell from the beam above and rattled to the floor.

She stooped to pick it up. "Look, Marion!" she exclaimed, "A key! A large brass key!"

Marion examined it closely. "What can it belong to?"

"The wreck perhaps. Looks like a steward's pass-key."

"But what would they save it for? You don't think—"

"If we could get out to the wreck, we'd see."

"Yes, but we can't. There—"

"Look, Marion!" Lucile's eyes were large and wild.

"The white line!" exclaimed Marion, gripping her arm.

It was true. Before them lay the dark ocean still flecked with foam, but at the horizon, gleaming whiter than burnished silver, straight, distinct, unmistakable, was a white line.

"And that means—"

"We're trapped!"

Lucile sank weakly into a chair. Marion began pacing the floor.

"Anyway," she exclaimed at last, "I can paint it! It will make a wonderful study."

Suiting action to words, she sought out her paint-box and was soon busy with a sketch, which, developing bit by bit, or rather, seeming to evolve out of nothing, showed a native dressed in furs, shading his eyes to scan the dark, tossing ocean. And beyond, the object of his gaze, was the silvery line. When she had finished, she playfully inscribed a title for the sketch at the bottom—"The Coming of the White Line."

For a moment she stood there thinking of the possibilities of a winter in this terrible land. Suddenly a glimmer of hope shot in out of the darkness—the strange, brown boy who had come to them out of the sea that day on Mutineer's Island! The scientist had said that he had probably been brought from somewhere to the north of Russia. If he should cross their path now, they would at least feel that, in all this wilderness, they had one friend. Then, with a smile, she realized how wildly improbable was the thought. To build a hope upon such a remote chance seemed utterly absurd.

As she put her paints away, something caught her eye. It was one corner of the blue envelop with the strange address upon it.

"Ah, there you are still," she sighed. "And there you will remain for nine months, or I miss my guess. I wish I hadn't kept my promise to the boy—wish I'd left you in the pigeonhole at Cape Prince of Wales."

Since the air was too chill, the wind too keen for travel, the girls slept that night in the cabin.

They awoke to a world unknown. The first glimpse outside the cabin brought surprised exclamations to their lips. The "white line" was gone. So, too, was the ocean. Before them, as far as the eye could see, lay a mass of yellow lights and purple shadows, ice-fields that had buried the sea. Only one object stood out black and bare before them—the hull of the wrecked ship.

"Look!" said Lucile, suddenly. "We can go out to the ship over the ice-floe!"

"'THE WHITE LINE!' EXCLAIMED MARION, GRIPPING HER ARM"

"Let's do it," said Marion, eagerly. They were soon threading their way in and out among the ice-piles, which were already solidly attaching themselves to the sand beneath the shallow water. And now they reached a spot where the water was deeper; where ice-cakes, some small as a kitchen floor, some large as a town lot, jostled and ground one upon another. They were only half-way to the wreck.

"Wo-oo, I don't like it!" exclaimed Lucile, as she leaped a narrow chasm of dark water.

"We'll soon be there," trilled her companion. "Just watch your step, that's all."

They pushed on, leaping from cake to cake, or racing across a broad ice-pan, now skirting a dark pool, now clambering over a pile of ice ground fine, as they made their way slowly, but surely, toward their goal.

"Listen!" exclaimed Marion.

"What is it?" asked Lucile, her voice quivering with alarm.

A strange, wild, weird sound came to them across the floe—a grinding, rushing, creaking, moaning sound, that increased in volume as the voice of a cyclone increases.

Only a second elapsed before they knew. Then with a cry of terror, Marion dragged her companion to the center of the ice-pan and pulled her flat to its surface. From somewhere, far out to sea, a giant tidal wave was sweeping through the ice-floe. Marion had seen it. The mountain of ice which it bore on its crest seemed as high as the solid ridge of rock behind them on the land. And with its weird, wild, rushing scream of grinding and breaking ice, it was traveling toward them. It had the speed of the wind, the force of an avalanche. When it came, what then?

With a rush, the wild terror of the arctic sea burst upon them. It lifted the giant ice-pan weighing hundreds of tons, tilted it to a dangerous angle, then dropped from beneath it. Marion's heart stopped beating, as she felt the downward rush of the avalanche of ice. The next instant she felt it crumble like an egg-shell. It had broken at the point where they lay. With a warning cry of terror, she sprang to her feet and pitched backward.

The cry came too late. As she rose unsteadily to her knees, she saw a dark brown bulk topple at the edge of the cake, then roll with a swash into the pool of water which appeared where the cake had parted. It was Lucile! She had fallen into the stinging arctic brine. What chance could there be for her life?

For the time being, the ice-field was quiet. The tidal wave had spent its force on the sandy beach.

That other, less violent, disturbances would follow the first, the girl knew right well. Hastily creeping to the brink of the dark pool, she strained her eyes for the sight of floating bit of cloth, a waving hand. There was none. Despair gripped her heart. Still she waited, and, as she waited, there came the distant sound, growing ever louder, of another onrushing tide.

When Lucile went down into the dark pool she was not only conscious but very much alive, and acutely aware of the peril of her situation. Should that chasm close before she rose, or as she rose, she was doomed. In one case she would drown; in the other, she would be crushed like a barnacle between ocean liners.

Down, down she sank. But the water was salt and buoyant. Now she felt herself rising. Holding her breath, she looked upward. A narrow ribbon of black was there to the right.

"That will be the open water," was her mental comment, "I must swim for it."

She was a strong swimmer. Her heavy fur garments impeded her. The sting of the water imperiled her power to remain conscious. Yet she struggled even as she rose.

Just when Marion had given up hope, she saw a head shoot above the water, then a pair of arms. The next instant she gripped both her companion's wrists and lifted as she had never lifted before. There was wild terror in her eyes. The roar of the second wave was drumming in her ears.

She was not a second too soon. Hardly had she dragged the half-unconscious girl from the pool, than it closed with a grinding crash, and the ice-pan again tilted high in air.

The strain of this on-rush was not so great. The cake held together. Gradually it settled back to its place.

Marion glanced in the direction of the wreck. They were very much nearer to it than to the shore. She thought she saw a small cabin in the stern. Lucile must be relieved of her salt-water-soaked and fast-freezing garments at once.

"Can you walk?" she asked.

Lucile staggered dizzily to her feet.

"I'll help you. The wreck! We must get there. You must struggle or you'll freeze."

Lucile did try. She strove as she had never done before—against the stiffening garments, the aching lungs and muscles, but most of all against the almost unconquerable desire to sleep.

Foot by foot, yard by yard, they made their way across the treacherous tangle of ice-piles, which was still in restless motion.

Now they had covered a quarter of the distance, now half; now three quarters; and now, with an exultant cry, Marion dragged her half-unconscious companion upon the deck.

"There's a cabin aft," she whispered, "a warm cabin. We'll soon be there."

"Soon be there," Lucile echoed faintly.

The climbing of the long, slanting, slippery deck was a terrible ordeal. More than once Marion despaired. At last they stood before the door. She put a hand to the knob. A cry escaped her lips:

"Locked!" Dark despair gripped her heart. But only for an instant. "Lucile, the key! The key we found in the cabin! Where is it?"

"The key—the key?" Lucile repeated dreamily.

"Yes, the key! The key!"

"Oh, yes, the key. Why, that's of no use."

"Yes, it is! It is!"

"It's in my parka pocket."

The next moment Marion was prying the key from a frozen pocket, and the next after that she was dragging Lucile into the cabin.

In one corner of the cabin stood a small oil-heater. Above it was a match-box. With a cry of joy, Marion found matches, lighted one, tried the stove, found it filled with oil! A blaze rewarded her efforts. There was heat; heat that would save her companion's life.

She next attacked the frozen garments. Using a knife where nothing else would avail, she stripped the clothing away until at last she fell to chafing the white and chilled limbs of the girl who still struggled bravely against the desire to sleep.

A half-hour later Lucile was sleeping naturally in a bunk at the upper wall of the room. She was snuggled deep in the interior of a mammoth deer-skin sleeping-bag. Her garments were drying beside the kerosene stove. Marion was drowsing half asleep by the fire.

Suddenly, she was aroused by a voice. It was a man's voice. She was startled.

"Please," the voice said, "may I come in? That's supposed to be my cabin, don't you know? But I don't want to be piggish."

Marion stared wildly about her. For a second she was speechless. Then she spoke: "Wait—wait a minute; I'm coming out."

CHAPTER VI

THE BLUE ENVELOP DISAPPEARS

When Marion heard the voice outside the cabin on the wreck, she realized that a new problem, a whole set of new problems, had arisen. Here was a man. Who was he? Could he be the grizzled miner who had demanded the blue envelop? If so, what then? Was there more than one man? What was to come of it all, anyway?

All this sped through her mind while she was drawing on her parka. The next moment she had opened the door, stepped out, and closed it behind her.

"Ah! I have the pleasure—"

"You?" Marion gasped.

For a second she could say no more. Before her, dressed in a jaunty parka of Siberian squirrel-skin, was the frank-faced college-boy—he of the Phi Beta Chi.

"Why, yes," he said rather awkwardly, "it is I. Does it seem so strange? Well, yes—I dare say it does. Suppose you sit down and I'll tell you about it."

Marion sat down on a section of the rail.

"Well, you see," he began, a quizzical smile playing about his lips, "when I had completed my—my—well, my mission to the north of Cape Prince of Wales, it was too late to return by dog-team. I waited for a boat. I arrived at the P.O. you used to keep. You were gone. So was my letter."

"Yes, you said—"

"Now, now, don't interrupt. That was quite all right; the thing I wanted you to do. But, you see, that letter is mighty important. I had to follow. This craft we're sitting on was coming this way. I took passage. She ran into a mess of bad luck. First we were picked up by an ice-floe and carried far into the Arctic Ocean. When at last we poled our way out of that, we were caught by a storm and carried southwest with such violence that we were thrown upon this sand-bar. The ship broke up some, but we managed to stick to her until the weather calmed. We went ashore and threw some of the wreckage into the form of a cabin. You've been staying there, I guess." He grinned.

Marion nodded.

"Well, the ship was hopeless. Natives came in their skin-boats from East Cape."

"East Cape? How far—how far is that?"

"Perhaps ten miles. Why?" He studied the girl's startled face.

"Nothing; only didn't a white man come with the natives?"

"A white man?"

"I've heard there was one staying there."

"No, he didn't come."

Marion settled back on the rail.

"Well," he went on, "the captain of this craft traded everything on board to the natives for furs; everything but some food. I bought that from him. You see, they were determined to get away as soon as possible. I was just as determined to stay. I didn't know exactly where you were, but was bound I'd find you—and the letter." He paused. "By the way," he said, struggling to conceal his intense interest, "have you the letter?"

Marion nodded. "It is in my paint-box over in the cabin."

The boy sprang eagerly to his feet. "May we not go fetch it?"

"I can't leave my friend here alone."

"BEFORE HER WAS THE FRANK-FACED COLLEGE-BOY"

"Then may I go?" He was eager as a child. Then, after a second, "Why, by Jove! I'm selfish. Haven't given you a chance to say a thing. Perhaps your friend is in trouble. Of course she is, or she'd be out here. What is it? Can I help you?"

"She's only chilled and recovering from a shock. The tidal wave threw her into the sea."

"Oh!" He stood thinking for a moment. "Do you intend to remain in Siberia all winter?"

"We had no such intention when we came, but the storm and the white line caught us. No more boats now."

"Say," he exclaimed, "you two can keep my cabin! There's a bunk below the deck where I can be quite comfortable." He did not wait for her reply. "I'll go for your things. You stay here. Any dogs?"

"Three."

"Good! I'll be back quicker than you think."

He was away. Bounding from ice-cake to ice-cake, he soon disappeared.

Marion reëntered the cabin, and sat there for a time, thinking. Then she fell to wondering if the boy had reached the shore safely, so she went outside again and climbed to the highest point on the rail. There she stood for some time, scanning the horizon.

"Strange he'd be way down there!" she murmured, at last; "a quarter of a mile south of the cabin. Perhaps the ice carried him."

The distance was so great she could distinguish no more than a figure, a mere speck, moving in and out among the ice-piles that lined the shore. For a moment she rested her eyes by studying the ship's deck. Then again she gazed away toward the cabin.

"Why!" she exclaimed suddenly, "he has reached the cabin! He must have run every step of the way!"

In the cabin on shore, the young stranger began packing the girls' possessions preparatory to putting them on the sled.

"Some careless housekeepers!" he grumbled, as he gathered up articles of clothing from every corner of the room, and, having straightened out Marion's paint-box, closed its cover down with a click.

He arrived at the schooner an hour later. The sled load was soon stowed away in the wireless cabin.

He brought a quantity of food, canned vegetables, bacon, hard-tack, coffee, and sugar from his store below. Then he stood by the door.

Marion was bustling about the cabin, putting things to rights. Lucile, a trifle pale, was sitting in the corner.

Presently Marion caught sight of him standing there. "Oh!" she exclaimed, "you are waiting for your reward?"

"Any time," he smiled.

"You shall have it right now—the blue envelop."

She seized her paint-box, and, throwing back the cover, lifted the paint-tray. Then from her lips escaped one word; "Gone!"

He sprang eagerly forward.

"It can't be!" Lucile breathed.

"Take a good look," the boy suggested.

Marion inspected the box thoroughly.

"No," she said, with an air of finality, "it's not here."

"Your—er—the paint-box," he stammered, "it was a bit disarranged."

"Disarranged?"

"Well, not in the best of order. Letter might have dropped out in the cabin. I dare say it's on the floor back there. Had you seen it lately?"

"Only this morning. I can't understand about the box. The wind must have blown it down, or something."

"I dare say." The boy smiled good-naturedly as he recalled the disordered room. "I'll hop right back and look for it."

It was with a very dejected air that he returned. Marion could not tell whether it was genuine or feigned. Had he been in such haste to secure the letter that he had taken it at once from the box? Was all his later action mere stage-play?

"No," he said, bringing forth a forlorn smile, "I couldn't find it. It's not there."

That evening, when, after a supper served on a small tip-down table in the wireless cabin, the boy had gone to his bunk below and Lucile had fallen asleep, Marion lay awake a long time puzzling over the mysteries of the past and the problems of the future. Where had the blue envelop disappeared to? Did the boy have it? She resolved to search, for herself, the cabin on the beach. She felt half inclined to talk matters over frankly with him. There were mysteries which might be cleared up. She remembered with what astonishing speed he had reached the cabin, once he had sprung upon the shore. She remembered, too, how he had spoken of the disordered paint-box. She prided herself on her neatness. And that paint-box, was it not her workshop, her prize possession? She longed to talk it over with him. But on the other hand, she could not bring herself to feel that her trust in him was fully warranted. She hated, above all things, to be "taken in." If she discussed all these things with him, and if, at the same time he had the letter, wouldn't she be taken in indeed?

"No," she pressed her lips tight shut, "no, I won't."

Morning found the boy in a quite different mood. He laughed and chatted gaily over his sour-dough pancakes.

"Now you know," he said, as he shoved back his stool, "I like your company awfully well, and I'd like to keep this up indefinitely; but I've got to get across the straits."

"We'll be sorry to lose you," laughed Marion; "but just you run along. And when you get there, tell the missionary that breakfast is ready. Ask him to step over and eat with us."

"No, but I'm serious."

"Then you're crazy. No white man has ever crossed thirty-five miles of floeing ice."

"There's always to be a first. Natives do it, don't they?"

"I've heard they do."

"I can go anywhere a native can, provided he doesn't get out of my sight."

"A guide across the straits! It's a grand idea!" Marion seized Lucile about the waist and went hopping out on deck. "A guide across the straits. We'll be home for Christmas dinner yet!"

"What, you don't mean—" The boy stared in astonishment.

"Surely I do. We can go anywhere you can, provided you don't get out of our sight."

"That—why, that will be dandy."

He said this with lagging enthusiasm. It was evident that he doubted their power of endurance.

"We'll have to go to East Cape to start."

"East Cape?" Marion exclaimed in a startled tone.

"Sure. What's wrong with East Cape?"

"Nothing—only, only that's where that strange white man is."

"What's so terrible about him?"

Marion hesitated. She had come to the end of a blind alley. Should she tell him of her experiences with the miner who demanded the blue envelop, 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 mighty good of you. It really was. That man—"

He hesitated. Marion thought she was going to be told the whole secret of the blue envelop.

"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 to-day. What say?"

"All right."

Marion 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.

The recent mysterious disappearance of the blue envelop remained unexplained. Under pretense of missing some article from her wardrobe, when on the beach ready to start for East Cape, Marion hastened to the cabin and made a quick search for the missing envelop; but it 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, who had fitted them to his feet, as she would have done for 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 clumsily shaped skin-boot.

CHAPTER VII

THE VISIT TO THE CHURCHES

It was with a feeling of strange misgiving that Marion found herself 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 envelop? 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 Chi. 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?

An interpreter was not hard to find at East Cape. 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 the straits—one 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 to-morrow?"

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

The guide, a swarthy fellow, with shaggy, drooping mustache 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 some coins in his hand.

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.

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, 'Want 'a go Cape Prince Wales two month, three month, all right, mebby. Go now? Not go.' He say, that one, 'Want 'a 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. Want 'a cross. No cross. Quick starve. Quick freeze. No good that one.'

"He say, that one, 'Tide-crack Spirit all a time lift ice, push ice, this way, that way. Want 'a kill man. No can do.'

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

"He say, that one, 'Want 'a 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 Marion, 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 seal-skin the women tan white for making slippers."

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

In a land so little known as this, one does not seek long for opportunities to express strange and unusual things. Marion had not been established a week with Lucile in an igloo, generously provided by the chief of the village, before an unusual opportunity presented itself.

The young college fellow, whom they had come to call "Phi," in lieu of a better name, had hired three natives with dog-teams. With these he had freighted all available supplies from the wreck to the village. Among these supplies was found a well-equipped medicine-chest. During her long visits in out-of-the-way places, Marion 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 people.

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 become 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. Marion prescribed cough medicine 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."

"Are there many Reindeer Chukches?"

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

"Ask the Chukche," Marion 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 quickly." Marion was away like a shot.

Tearing into their igloo, she surprised 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 smiled at Marion, who sat before her.

"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 very Far North in Siberia hid one of their igloos, and every hill and tundra fed one of their herds. And I am to paint them. Think of it! a new type of native!"

"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?"

Marion'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."

(To be concluded)

CHAPTER VIII

RENEWED ACQUAINTANCE

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 on the open wind-swept tundra itself. 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 were a people who paid no rent, no taxes, owned no land, yet lived always in abundance. In the box beside the sleeping-platform was tea and sugar. Over the fire hung a copper tea-kettle 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. The stranger and his daughter did not live alone. A little tribe whose twenty igloos dotted the tundra traveled with them. 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 Marion 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; 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," Marion 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."

But days passed. Four, five, six of them dragged wearily past, with no sign of preparation for a trip to East Cape. Driven to desperation, the girls were considering a mad attempt to reach the port alone, when a remarkable thing happened. They had just dressed and were frying reindeer chops for breakfast, one morning, when a round face was thrust in at the tent-flap and a cheery voice cried,

"Hello!"

For a moment they did not recognize the boy; then, with a breathless whisper, Lucile gasped, "Why! it's our man Friday of Mutineer's Island!"

And so it proved to be. The boy had learned to speak English brokenly during his sojourn in America. He had found his way back to his home on the north coast of Russia, and was now living with his own people. News travels far. He had heard of two strange white people living among the reindeer Chukches. He had traveled two hundred miles to see them.

"And now," he smiled, "now it is my very good friends, who save me much time ago."

The girls did not waste many moments before telling him their predicament. He set to work at once to assist them. Not three hours had passed when they found themselves again speeding over the snow, behind reindeer driven by their man Friday of other days.

It was a hard trip, with many an overturned sled and one terrible blizzard, which came howling down from the north, but in time they came in sight of the jagged slope of the hill that marked the spot where the little village nestled.

"Phi" met them at the outskirts of the town.

"Are—are we too late?" Marion's heart was in her mouth.

The boy smiled an odd smile.

"About six hours, I'd say."

"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.

Marion'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 couple of 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 Marion; "but I do know I'm powerful hungry. Let's go find something to eat."

CHAPTER IX

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?" Marion 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 snow-shoes. Ice is terribly piled up."

He disappeared in the direction of his own igloo.

Marion 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, "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—where's the guide?" asked Lucile.

"You'll see. Come 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 kayak.

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.

Marion and the dog were quickly ferried over. Then, after drawing the kayak 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 puffed, as he snatched Marion'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 seven or eight miles an hour.

"Why, I thought—thought we were going to go east," puffed Marion. "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 kayak 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 kayak. 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. His tail went up, his 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.

Marion 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!" Marion 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, half-way station of the straits, were small—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 strike 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."

Marion did see, but this did not entirely still the wild beating of her heart. 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 Strait. 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 on his stomach and hacked a hole through the ice. Water bubbled up, while Marion 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 of the river on the ice seem a mere 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. Maybe to the south; we'll see."

He disappeared around a giant ice-pile.

The two girls, placing their burdens of food and Marion'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.

An hour passed, but no call echoed across the silent white expanse. Marion, 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 girls, ten miles from any land, on the bosom of a vast ice-floe, which was slowly but surely sweeping toward the unknown northern sea. They had no chart, no compass, no trail to follow, and no guide. To move would seem futile. Yet to remain where they were meant 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 the tidal-wave beneath the ice.

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 trace of the lost trail. 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 on 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 even 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 hold on," he mumbled.

He sat down patiently to wait.

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

CHAPTER X

"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 upon them.

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

"By that time—" echoed Lucile. "But now—we must do something. Surely, there is some way!"

"'Without compass or guide?'" Marion smiled at the impossibility of a solution.

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

"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, Marion! We can see them! We can! We can!"

"What can we see?" asked Marion.

"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 northward drift of the ice-floe.

"But Phi?" exclaimed Lucile.

Marion 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. As he rushed back over the way by 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.

"'OH, MARION! WE CAN SEE THEM! WE CAN!'"

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 flat on the ice 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 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. 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" left 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.

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 there. Might be an Eskimo hunter who has wandered far on the ice-floe, for all I know; but he'll end up somewhere, sometime."

During the greater part of this time, Marion and Lucile, shaping their course by the stars, were traveling in the general direction of the Diomede Islands.

Suddenly, as she marched along ahead, Marion uttered a low exclamation, at the same time pointing to the mark of a skin-boot in the snow.

She did not say it, but she was at once convinced that it was worn by the same person whose footprint she had seen close to the cabin on the beach near the wreck. Had they come upon the trail of the bearded miner and his guide, or was this some other person? If they met on the ice-floe, what would happen, defenseless as they were? Even their dog was gone.

For a moment, consternation seized her; but the next instant found her calm. There was nothing to do but go on, keeping the course they had chosen.

"Probably some Eskimo hunter out for white bear," she said to Lucile; "or, for that matter, it might have been made some time ago, on a spot of the ice-bound ocean's surface hundreds of miles from here."

And again they took up their march due south by east.

{[dhr]} Phi had been plodding along after Rover for hours. Minute by minute 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 he seen.

When he had fairly given up hope of overtaking them, as he speeded around a gigantic ice-pile, he came in sight at once of those he followed and of land.

So overjoyed was he, 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, sprang at the boy's throat.

So taken by surprise was Phi, that he was totally unprepared for the attack. 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 odds were all in favor of the man. Larger, stronger, older, with the advantage of the aggressor, he bade fair 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 hands toward the lad's throat.

The next instant, as if thrown by a springboard, the man flew into the air. Phi was now on his feet. His one thought was 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 thing of terror was upon him.

But this time, there came tearing over the ice a new wild terror, and this one was 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 away from him, and, pointing toward the islands which loomed in the distance, motioned the man to go.

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

The dog stood on his haunches and howled; howled until the distant cliffs of the islands sent back the echo.

Other audience he had than Phi. Marion and Lucile heard that howl, and redoubled their speed.

As they rounded some splinters of ice, Marion sprang forward.

"Look, Lucile! The blue envelop!"

It was none other. It lay there on the ice alone.

"That's queer," said Lucile.

Marion still held the envelop in her hand, when they came upon Phi and Rover.

"Did did you lose this?" she asked, without thinking.

"Why, yes," the boy smiled, "I believe I did, or you did, or something of the kind. Glad to see it. May I have it?"

His face took on a tense expression, as he took the letter from the envelop. He read with what appeared to be absorbing interest.

"Jove!" He said, "That's—that's all right! Where'd you find it?"

Marion suddenly forgot that she had suspected him of having it all the time. "Back there on the ice," she smiled.

"That explains it. His nibs, your bearded friend, just now attacked me. Probably thought I was after that letter. In the fight he doubtless lost it from his pocket."

All at once Marion remembered the large skin-boot track by the cabin on the beach and the one on the ice-floe.

"Yes," she said, "that explains it. He stole it from my paint-box. It was he who threw our things about while searching for it."

"But it wouldn't do him any good," the boy's face took on a puzzled expression; "it's written in Greek."

"Probably going across to find some one who could read it."

"Probably."

For a time they were silent.

"I—I guess I may as well tell you about it," said the boy. "It's really no great mystery; no great story of the discovery of gold, or anything. Just the locating of a bit of whalebone.

"You see, my uncle came to the North with two thousand dollars. He stayed three years. By that time the money was gone and he had found no gold. That happens often, I'm told. Then, one day, he came upon the carcass of an immense bow-head whale far north on the Alaskan shore. It had been washed ashore by a storm. No natives lived near. The bone of that whale was worth a fortune. He cut it out and buried it in the sand-dunes near the beach. So eager was he to make good at last, that he actually lived on the gristly flesh of that whale until the work was done. Then he went south in search of a gasolene schooner to bring the treasure away. It was worth four or five thousand dollars. But he had made himself sick. He was brought home from Nome delirious. From his ravings, his son, my cousin, gathered some notion of a treasure hid away in Alaska. The doctor said he would recover in time. His family was in need of money. I offered to come up here and find out what I could. His son was to write me any information he could obtain. We had written one another letters in Greek while in college. We decided to do it in this case, addressing one another as Phi Beta Chi.

"Apparently, my uncle had said too much in his delirium before he left Nome. This crooked old miner, our bearded friend, heard it, and later, somehow, got on my trail.

"You know the rest, except that this letter gives the location of the whalebone. In the spring I shall go after it."

"Then," murmured Marion, still a trifle mystified, "why were you in such a hurry to get across the straits?"

"That's easy," he smiled; "there was a fair chance that the letter you had lost was not the most important one. The right one might still be waiting for me at the post-office. Then, too, my cousin might have written a duplicate. At any rate, I had to take the chance. It was all there was left to do."

"Shall we go now?" He smiled again. "All right, Rover; mush!"

"Brave old Rover!" murmured Marion. "For he is a white man's dog."

No further interruptions came to Phi's plans. In the middle of the next summer he might have been seen leaning over the rail of a southbound steamer. Beside him stood a girl. It was Marion. She was going "outside" to study art; he to deliver the treasure to its owner.

THE END

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