“No, they seemed quite ready to take the castaway and his rifle along. But”—Mr. Mar looked so grave that Jack came closer still—“to go up yonder with them to their underground winter home seemed to the castaway almost as horrible as to be left behind. Well, he had a day anyhow to think it over. His wound was still pretty painful, but he felt whatever happened, he ought to go over the tundra to that queer hill and take a look at the situation from the top. He must have been feverish, or he’d have realized that he wasn’t fit yet for hard exercise, and that there wasn’t a ghost of a likelihood of a settlement on the far side, since these natives knew nothing about it. Then you see, there was the awful danger that on this last day a rescue party should sail hopelessly by while he was away, or a whaling schooner pass, that he might have hailed. But no. He had got it into his head that if he could only reach the top of that glacier-carved height, all his troubles would be at an end. But he did have the sense to guard against the natives making off in his absence. He got one of the boys to come along with him. “How old was vat boy?” “Oh—a—about your size, but four or five years older, and very clever at throwing the bird-dart. No, I’ll tell you about that another time. They set off across the tundra. It wasn’t easy walking. It wasn’t walking at all. It was jumping from one moss knoll to another, or wading to the knees in the spongy hollows. But he’d look up at the peak and say: ‘Once I’m _there_—’ All the same, he had to call a halt several times. He’d find a dryish place, and he’d sit down and stare about him. They had long lost sight of the sand-spit. Even the sea had disappeared. To right and left, as far as you could see, tundra, tundra, nothing but tundra, a few pools shining in the hollows, and acres of sedge and moss, and low-growing ‘scrub-willow.’ Nothing else. Just this featureless plain till the land met the ocean and the ocean met the arctic ice. Suddenly, ‘What’s that?’ says the white man, and he pointed sou’west. The native stared. The light plays you queer tricks on the tundra. You often see lakes and ships and cities that aren’t there. But this didn’t look like a mirage, it was too simple, too distinct. Just two sticks stuck in the tundra. They might be one mile away, they might be ten. But there those sticks stood as clear against the blue sky as a couple of bean poles on a prairie farm.” “Vey _weren’t_ bean poles!” said the prescient listener.