Part 16 (1/2)

”Can--can we cross the Straits?” Marian asked, breathless with euide I'll show you Be ready in a half-hour Bring your pictures and a little food Not much Wear snowshoes Ice is terribly piled up”

He disappeared in the direction of his own igloo

Marian looked about the cozy deerskin hoazed away at the masses of deep purple shadows that stretched across the ie 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 coe to shi+ft for the-tione north and before walrus would co schooners

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

When the girls joined Phi on the edge of the ice-floe, they looked about for the guide but saw none Only Rover barked theuide?” asked Lucile

”You'll see C' the way

For a mile they traveled over the solid shore-ice They then cae of this was a two-seated kiak

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

Marian and the dog were quickly ferried over Then, after drawing the kiak upon the ice, the boy turned directly north and began walking rapidly At tiood time,” he explained as he snatched Marian's roll of sketches froood ti, they kept up a pace of soht ere going to go east,” puffed Marian

”We're just going down the beach”

Phi did not answer

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

”Ah! I thought so,” said the boy ”Now's the ti by his collar and set him on the invisible trail of thewalked sloay, sniffing the ice as he went His course was due east The three followed him in silence Presently his speed increased He took on an air of confidence With tail up, ears back, he sniffed the ice only now and then as he dashed over great, flat pans, then over little ain upon flat surfaces

Marian understood, and her adrew 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 ood old Rover, a white ”

All at once a question cao several miles north to pick up the trail This was due to the movement of the floe Thisthem still farther to the north The Diomede Islands, halfway station of the Straits, were sth If they were carried much farther north, would they not miss the islands?

She confided her fears to Phi

”I thought of that,” he suess You see, I'll try to tiure out as closely as I can e have covered the eighteenus even with the islands Then, too, old Rover will be losing the trail about that tiuide leave the floe to go upon the solid shore ice of the islands, the floe is going to keep right onnorth That breaks the trail, see? When we strike the end of that trail we can go due south and hit the islands If the air is at all clear, we can see the it without a trail”

Marian did ”see,” but this did not entirely still the wild beating of her heart as she leaped a yawning chasiant up-ended cakes of ice, or felt her way cautiously across a strip of newly-forht as if it were e, wild thrill that she realized they were far out over the conquered sea Hundreds of feet beloas the bed of Bering Straits Above that bed a wild, swirling current of frigid salt water raced