Part 9 (2/2)

Since the air was too chill, the wind too keen for travel, the girls slept that night in the cabin They awoke to a neorld The first gliht surprised exclaht the world appeared to have been transforone So, too, was the ocean Before thehts and purple shadows, ice-fields that had buried the sea Only one object stood out, black, bleak and bare before them--the hull of the wrecked and abandoned shi+p

”Look!” said Lucile suddenly, ”we can go out to the shi+p over the ice-floe!”

”Let's do it,” said Marian enthusiastically ”Perhaps there's some sort of a solution to our proble their way in and out a themselves to the sand beneath the shalloater

And now they reached a spot where the water was deeper, where ice-cakes, soe as a town lot, jostled and ground one upon another

”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 fro a dark pool, now claround fine, they oal

”Listen!” exclai dead in her tracks

”What is it?” asked Lucile, her voice quivering with alare, wild, weird sound ca,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 Marian dragged her companion to the center of the ice-pan and pulled her flat to its surface Fro through the ice-floe Marian had seen it The h as the solid ridge of rock behind the screa 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 the hundreds of tons, tilted it to a dangerous angle, then dropped fro as she felt the doard rush of the avalanche of ice The next instant she felt it cru-shell It had broken at the point where they lay With a warning cry of terror she sprang to her feet and pitched forward

The cry was too late As she rose unsteadily to her knees, she saw a dark brown bulk topple at the edge of the cake, then roll like a log into the dark pool of water which appeared where the cake had parted

That object was Lucile Dead or alive? Marian could not tell But whether dead or alive she had fallen into the stinging Arctic brine

What chance could there be for her life?

For the ti 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 sight of a floating bit of cloth, a waving hand

There was none Despair gripped her heart Still she waited, and as she waited, there ca ever louder, of another onrushi+ng tide

When Lucile went down into the dark pool she was not dead She was conscious and very much alive Very conscious she was, too, 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

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 to the right of her

”That will be the open water,” was herswi of the water iled even as she rose

Just when Marian had given up hope, she saw a head shoot above the water, then a pair of arripped both her companion's wrists and lifted as she never lifted before There ild terror in her eye The roar of the second as dru in her ears

She was not a second too soon Hardly had she dragged the half-unconscious girl fro crash, and the ice-pan again tilted high in air