“Don’t say—anything to me. And don’t”—the wild face twitched with pain—“_don’t look at me_. Just—stand there, with Ky—till the boat’s ready. And when you go—don’t speak.” Again the dimming eyes sought on the tundra for that vague shadow that was his fellow-explorer and his friend. “I shall watch you, Ky—till the whaler—takes you—South.” As Hildegarde, bending lower, tried to form speech with her quivering lips, “No,” he whispered. “You’ve done—all—you—can. All, but this last thing. I’d like—to see her as long as ever—But don’t speak, and—_don’t—look—back_.” His eyes went past the girl, went straining after the dog, as though Ky were in truth as dim to-day as on that gray morning when he saw her first, standing in front of the pack, wrapped in mist, nose to the north, waiting for him “up yonder” by the Kara shore. Out there, on the tundra edge again, the great explorer, Ky, stood like some old coastguard reading the signs of the sea. Behind, at the door of the hut, Hildegarde Mar. But though the girl, too, looked straight across the surf, toward the islands named for those in the Adriatic after the Argive king, what she saw was not the nearer Diomede and not the little boat fighting its way through the surf; not even her lover running along the shore and looking among the high-piled rocks; not John Galbraith, dying behind her there in the shadow. Clearer than if she’d held it in her hand, she saw the colored crayon sketch that lay charred among the ashes. So it was like that!—the terrible, beautiful place that would still go luring men with its lying legend on all the maps, crying out in every tongue in Europe— _UNEXPLORED REGION!_ COME AND FIND ME! CHAPTER XXVI At last! After fruitless, heart-sickening search among the boulders, Cheviot had caught sight of Hildegarde breasting easily the risen wind, stepping lightly and without the least inconvenience down from the tundra to the beach. Over the rocks he came running, making signals for haste. Red, too, a long way behind, went racing along the shore, back and forth, barely out of the spray; running seaward when the breakers retreated, fleeing from them on their return, howling at the sailors as they bent over their oars, hardly fifty yards from the foam-line. Hildegarde made her way blindly, stumbling among stones, scattering bits of pilot bread in her wake, and casting backward looks. “Hurry! Hurry!” Cheviot was shouting. “She’s so lame!” Hildegarde couldn’t hear his next words, but she caught the quick gesture of one who reproachfully reminds himself. And he was flying forward to her aid. “I’m all right—but the dog—” Without slackening pace, a hand at either side of his mouth, he called: “They can’t hold the boat in that surf.” “Ky—the dog—”