The Blue Envelope Part 18

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

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

That, indeed, was a problem. They had covered considerable ground.

The ice had been s.h.i.+fting. To pick up their back trail seemed impossible. An hour's search convinced him that it could not be done.

He sat down in a brown study. He could not go away and leave these girls to drift north and perish, yet further search seemed futile.

Just as he was about to despair, Rover began to bark in the distance.

Following the sound, he came to where the dog was apparently barking at nothing. But as the boy approached, the dog shot away over the ice.

"A trail!" he muttered, following on.

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

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

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

Fifteen minutes of this told him that this was no white bear's trail.

It went too straight ahead for that. Neither could it be his own trail, for he would have come to a sudden turn before this. One thing more was certain: The person or persons who made this trail were headed due south by east. They would, if they did not change their course, in time reach the vicinity of the Diomede Islands. Were they his friends, or the unfaithful guide and his party? This he could not tell.

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

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

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

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

"Hey, there!"

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

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

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

The native guide had pa.s.sed 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 h.o.r.n.y hands toward his throat.

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

Again the wild terror was upon him.

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

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

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

CHAPTER XII

"WHAT IS THAT?"

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

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

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

"Couldn't read our cipher, so he was going to Nome for help, I reckon,"

he muttered. "All I've got to say is, it's lucky he lost it and I found it."

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

"If only I can make it back to the American sh.o.r.e," he exulted.

"Rover, old boy, get back on your job. We're going to the islands."

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

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

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

They listened and the bark came to them very distinctly.

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

"I can't tell," whispered Marian.

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

At the moment when Phi sat down to think, they were just coming in sight of that same break in the floe, on the side of which he sat.

They were not a mile apart, but the distance had as well been a hundred miles as, in this labyrinth of ice-floes, no person finds another, and, as it turned out later, Phi took the trail to the left and they the one to the right.

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

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

"What's this?" she exclaimed.

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

Suddenly Marian threw up her head and laughed. "It's only a kiak.

Some Eskimo has left it on the ice and the floe has carried it away."