  When Sandy burst into the igloo with his precious find clutched to his breast he found Dick asleep. He shook his chum out of the sleeping bag in a hurry. “What’s all the excitement about?” Dick mumbled rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “Something from Corporal Thalman,” Sandy cried, thrusting the canteen under Dick’s eyes. Dick started forward as he read the words carved in the leather, and uttered a cry of astonishment. “Where’s an axe? Let’s break the bottle open and see what’s inside! Won’t Corporal McCarthy open his eyes when he sees this!” Dick was even more excited than Sandy. A moment later they had split the bottle as carefully as they could and from the inside extracted a tightly rolled strip of leather, about the width of an ordinary sheet of writing paper. The leather apparently had been cut from an old shirt. Unrolled, it presented a mass of words and a crude map, carved in the leather by something in the nature of a sharp stone. “It’s a message from Corporal Thalman!” exclaimed Dick, deciphering the initials, “C. T.” and the abbreviation for “Royal Northwest Mounted Police.” “And that map shows where he is!” Sandy cried. “Right now it looks the same as Greek to me,” Dick admitted, frowning over the wandering lines, crosses and data. “Let’s read the script and see if that will help.” The following is what the boys read from the strange manuscript:
Dick and Sandy finished reading the message at about the same time, yet they did not draw from it quite the same conclusions. “Then I found the canteen after it had been floating and drifting for nearly two months,” Sandy spoke, still awed by the importance of his discovery. “Yes, as Corporal Thalman hoped, his message found its way to the sea from some underground stream,” Dick rejoined. Upon re-examining the map they satisfied themselves that the glacial island drawn there was the one they were now camping upon. They traced the trail by which they had come along the east side of the ridge, and rejoiced to find that the meteor stone indicated by the cross must be identical with the one they had found. Estimating on a basis of the scale of miles drawn by Corporal Thalman, they found they were encamped not more than five miles from the point at which the Corporal had been captured eight months before, and hardly thirty miles, allowing for detours, from the actual prison pit. “Oh, boy! This is more thrilling than looking for lost mines!” Sandy cried exuberantly. “It’s even more risky,” Dick returned, “and in this case it’s just as difficult. There must be a lot of inaccuracies in this map. The location here may be pretty near ten miles off. I wish the policemen were here to help. This is really too big a job for us.” “Wouldn’t it be a feather in our caps if we found Corporal Thalman all by ourselves!” Sandy puffed out his chest. Dick admitted that it would, though he reprimanded Sandy for his exaggeration of their capabilities. “Before we get ready to hunt for the Corporal we must draw a copy of this map and leave it for Corporal McCarthy,” Dick directed. “If they don’t return before we leave on a search for the fissure, the copy will give them all the information they need to work on their own accord.” An hour later the boys had completed a copy of the map and message, detail by detail, and prepared for a few hours rest before they started for the glacier. Map The boys awakened after nearly eight hours sleep, to find that the policemen had not yet returned. They immediately set about harnessing a dog team and loading a sledge with a few days’ supplies. They intended to hunt musk-oxen also on their trip inland, and in that way kill two birds with one stone. Provided they failed to locate Corporal Thalman’s prison, they could at least bring back a sledge load of musk-ox meat. Since Sipsa and his Eskimos could be depended upon to take care of the camp, Dick decided that Toma should go with them if he liked, and found the Indian boy overjoyed at the opportunity to escape the dullness of life at the supply base. After bidding the grinning, moon-faced Sipsa good-bye, the boys started out, driving their dog team at a gallop. It was not long before they reached a point below the head of the glacial ridge from which they could see the meteor stone near which they had built the cairn. From there they began to count their strides—approximately 1,760 to a mile, and three miles to the spot where Corporal Thalman had been attacked and captured by Mistak and his band. Dick and Sandy both counted their steps so they might check against each other when the required distance was covered. At last they reached a mass of boulders sticking up out of the snow which was within a quarter mile of the distance on the map. “This looks like a likely place for a man to be surprised and captured,” said Dick, signaling them to halt. He referred to the map. “According to the route laid out here, Mistak bore slightly to the left when he went on with his captive.” With this in mind they passed the boulders and came out on a broad, snow-covered tundra stretching for several miles inland from the sea and ending abruptly some miles south in towering walls of ice that marked the position of the glacier. Driving southwest, the three boys began the long trek across the tundra, hoping they might soon sight the abandoned igloos indicated on the map as the next landmark. But two hours of steady mushing failed to raise anything resembling a habitation. The tundra still stretched monotonously ahead of them, the countless acres of snow glaring in their eyes as it reflected the sun’s rays. Dick called a halt and the three boys gathered about the sledge, permitting the dogs to lie down and rest their tired legs. “We’ll have to use our heads now,” said Dick. “Corporal Thalman has either underestimated the distance from the point of his capture to the igloos, or else we’re traveling in the wrong direction.” “Well, I’d say,” put in Sandy, “that no Eskimo would build an igloo out on this level plain where it would catch the full force of all the storms that blew down from the pole.” “You’re right, Sandy,” announced Dick. “Those igloos must have been built where there was some sort of wind break. Suppose we swing around due south until we get into the rough country on the outskirts of the glacier.” “That seems to be about the best plan,” Sandy rejoined. “It’s a cinch there’s nothing north of us as far as the sea.” “Me no savvy,” Toma muttered, and Dick promised to explain the map more thoroughly when they pitched camp. The distance to the glacier was deceiving. It was fully an hour after they changed their course before they struck the first break in the tundra and began to climb upward along the ravine down the trough of which the glacier had flung out a finger centuries before. When they had climbed to a height nearly a hundred feet above the tundra they paused to reconnoiter. Approximating their position on Corporal Thalman’s map, they judged themselves to be in a big bend in the formation of the glacier. Far ahead, over the various hills and ridges, they could see where the vast mass of ice broadened and began its slide to the sea. “You know what I think,” Dick broke a long silence, “those igloos are right under the walls of the glacier where it flows down to the sea.” “I wouldn’t wonder but what you’re right,” Sandy replied dubiously, “but why not go on pretty slow so we can examine all the territory between us and where the glacier turns?” “Better yet,” Dick sanctioned. “We can’t be too thorough. For all we know, every mistake we make in reading this map may be just like pounding another nail in Corporal Thalman’s coffin.” “Ugh!” Sandy shivered at the thought, as they started out again. With an interval of some hundred yards between them, the boys proceeded, Toma in the center driving the dog team. Almost any of the sheltered spots in the vicinity of the glacier might hide half a dozen igloos, and they were not going to pass up any likely places if they could help it. The boys were growing weary, indeed, when Sandy, considerably in the lead, stopped dead still upon a mound of ice, and let out a cheer like an Indian war whoop. “There they are! There they are!” his shout was faintly borne to the ears of Dick and Toma. The two forced their tired legs into a staggering run, which soon brought them up with Sandy. Below them, snug on the southern slope of a pyramid of glacial drift, were the abandoned igloos. They had located the second landmark on the trail to Corporal Thalman’s prison! |
|
