From right to left across the valley, and up and down its length, through the powerful lenses of his field glasses, the eyes of the captain swept. He returned them to their case with a snap. "There's nothing to do but go back to the ship," he said, and it was by an effort that he curbed his voice to an ordinary tone. "Wright and Janess never reached here. They must have perished in the snows. Perhaps they fell into a crevasse. And here the great calamity that the geologist prophesied has come. All is dead." But, kneeling in the snow with shaded eyes, Parkerson the sailor discovered what Scoland with his glasses had failed to find. He sprang up with a glad cry. "They're here! See! See the smoke! There, on the side of the third hill!" He was on his feet and dancing in his excitement. Scoland whipped the glasses out once more. He directed them against the snowy slopes of Mount Latmos. Under his thick, black mustache his lips writhed as he gazed. Yes, there was no doubt of it. From a dark patch against the whiteness of the drifts, a slender curling spiral of smoke was ascending. Already Parkerson, his honest face aglow with delight, had started on down the slope, leading the team. His heart was filled with thanks that he should be able, in some measure, to repay the man who had saved his life. With his eye Scoland measured the distance down the valley to that spiral of smoke. No, the sound would not carry. And if it did? Well, he was ready, and a desperate man. He unwound from his neck its thick woolen muffler and sprang down the slope behind the sailor. Drawing his heavy automatic from its holster and wrapping it in the scarf, he shot Parkerson through the head. Scoland caught the man as he fell and threw the body on the sledge. To turn the dogs back was the work of an instant, and in the next he was speeding down through the north pass as though devil-driven. Halfway down, he halted and hid the corpse in the drift at the side of the way, kicking loose snow above it. Then he leaped on the sledge and urged the dogs on recklessly. On down the pass they flew. Far out on the Hunters' Road their master was still driving them in frenzied haste, nor stopped to camp and rest until he had put a full score of miles between himself and the still figure that lay beneath the snows. He followed his own trail back, finding it unobliterated for long stretches in many places. When he was two hours from the ship, he drove the team off the trail at the side of a cliff, overturned the sledge, and shot the eight huskies, one by one, as they cowered and whimpered in their harness.