“No, he wasn’t mad, but he wanted some strips to tie round a wound he’d got.” “Oh! And when he’d done vat?” “Then he went up on the tundra.” “What’s ve—” “The tundra is the great, rolling plain. They call it ‘the steppes’ in Siberia. A few inches below the arctic moss that covers it, it’s frozen, even in summer, as hard as iron. And it never melts. It’s been frozen like that for millions of years.” “Why did ve man want to go up on ve—ve—?” “Well, he seemed to think he’d like to go to sleep. So that’s what he did. He slept a long time. When he woke up he went down to the beach, and the first thing he saw was his friend. It looked as if the friend had been sleepy, too. He was taking his ease down there on the sand, in a tangle of seaweed. His face was hidden. The other one went down to him, as fast as his wound would let him, and he called several times. Then he took hold of his friend’s shoulder and shook him. But the friend never stirred—he was dead. Up there, above the line of seaweed and driftwood, either he or the surf had flung his rifle—the butt rather battered, but nothing a handy man couldn’t put right; only a rifle isn’t much good without cartridges. By and by, the live man dug a grave for the dead one up above tide line in the sand; and when he had buried the body, he sat down and wondered how long it would be before the end would come for himself. While he sat there tinkering at the rifle, a couple of natives came down the coast.” “Cannibals?” In his excitement Jack dropped on the floor like a small Turk, with his legs curled under him. But he had steadied his precipitate fall into that position with a hand on his friend’s leg—and, as ill-luck would have it, not the good leg, but the stiff, forbidding member that poor Mar dragged about the world with the help of his stout walking-stick. Now, to touch that leg would have been like touching the leg of a table, if somehow it hadn’t been more like touching a corpse. Jack’s friend didn’t seem to mind. But the boy felt the contact the more keenly for the fact that Mar felt it hardly at all. That was the horror of a wooden leg—that it couldn’t feel. Jack snatched away his hand as if it had been burned. But Mar was saying calmly, “Cannibals? Oh, no. Esquimaux, quite good fellows. They must have seen white men and firearms before, for they took a deep interest in the rifle. The castaway made them understand he was hungry. They nodded and pointed back the way they had come. The white man got up and hobbled away with them.” “What made him hobble?”