At this point he became alarmed, and instead of making a circle around the camp of moss thoroughly beaten down and soaked, he started to try to beat out the existing fire, an almost hopeless task, for the reason that the flames crept under the surface unseen and almost unfelt, only betraying their presence by a faint film of vapor. By the time that he realized that he should have devoted his energy to making a fireguard around the camp, the tundra was burning too close to the tents for him to be able to dare stop checking it long enough to start protective remedies. In spite of all his labor, however, the fire reached one of the smaller tents, where some of the maps were kept, and the dry canvas and mosquito netting, catching alight suddenly, went up in the air as though it had been a fire balloon, and blazing fragments of the tent, falling on the tundra about, gave source to a dozen more fires. George rushed over the red-hot tundra and carried the maps, which, though scorched, were not badly injured, to the main tent, and then devoted himself to encircling that tent thoroughly with beaten and wetted moss, watching to see that no spark crossed and that no treacherous fire crept along between the roots of the moss. Matters were at this point when the Indian appeared, and with one man watching the tents and the other beating out the fire progress was made, the danger being entirely averted when the whole party arrived. The peril over, the other members of the party went back for the canoes, bringing them into the camp late in the evening. The next morning all boarded the canoes to cross Cache Lake, which, connected with a score of other sloughs, led to the initial streams of the Anaktuvuk, the main tributary of the Colville, which latter river flows into the Arctic Ocean. They had paddled perhaps two miles when the Indian gave a guttural grunt and pointed to the shore that they had left. There, rising high in the clear air, was a column of faint blue smoke. "They say you can't put out a tundra fire," said Rivers, "and I begin to believe it." "Then how long do you suppose that will burn?" asked Roger. "Until the winter puts about a foot of snow over it, I suppose," the geologist answered, "and it'll hate to quit even then." CHAPTER XIX RACING A POLAR WINTER The comparatively flat plateau country, dotted with sloughs, on which the party had embarked after leaving the camp on the tundra, where they had been forced to fight with fire to save their possessions, lasted but a short while on the journey. Before evening the edge of the table-land was neared and the scattering rivulets drained into a narrow and swift stream, which Roger learned was the Anaktuvuk. Rivers, though conservative in manner as always, was obviously delighted at the thought that all the hard up-stream labor was at an end, with the expedition well ahead of its time, and many important details, topographical and geological, discovered.