They fell in behind the excited captain of the _Kalrye_, who led them along the shelf, around an abrupt corner, and brought them out upon a small plateau in which there was a sink. Mr. Damon was lying flat upon his stomach and looking down into this chasm. He turned his red face toward Ned and Kingston and burst out with: “Bless my Italian gardens! here is the most wonderful thing I ever saw. Did you bring that rope?” “It’s coming,” said Ned. “What is the matter down there, Mr. Damon?” “Greatest thing in the world, Ned!” exclaimed the eccentric gentleman. “The coincidence is wonderful. Who would ever have thought it! Well!” “It’s wonderful, all right,” repeated the puzzled Ned. “Both you and Captain Karofsen say so. But just what _is_ it?” “Come here! See yonder? Half a mile or so away is the crevasse down which those two unfortunate men tumbled who were carrying my chest of Danish gold. We never expected to see them again—or the chest. And I guess the chest _is_ done for,” admitted the excited Mr. Damon. Ned and the operator were now beside him. They knelt on the ice and likewise peered down into the blue-white depths of the sink. Ned uttered a shout of amazement. “What do you know about this!” murmured Kingston. Under an out-thrust shelf of ice and on the bottom of the hole a small fire was smouldering. Two muffled figures lay beside this tiny fire. But they moved, first one and then the other raising his head and then waving a feeble hand to the spectators on the brink of the ice wall. “The lost seamen?” demanded New Newton of Mr. Damon. “Karofsen’s brother and nephew,” the gentleman answered. “I don’t care about the lost gold! The men are still alive! They must have suffered terribly. And how they found fuel for even that little fire, I don’t see.” The eager schooner captain just then arrived with the pair of seamen he had called. They had a coil of rope long enough to reach to the bottom of the cleft in the ice. It was plain that the men below could not help themselves. Kingston, who was the lightest of the party, volunteered to go down. “Take the pag vonce,” said Karofsen eagerly. “I pet you it vill come handy—yes? Now, are you ready?” The operator swung out from the ice, and fending himself from the wall with feet and hands, was lowered safely to the floor of the sink. As soon as he stood upon his feet there he disengaged himself from the loop of the rope and ran across to the two men. They tried to struggle up, but both dropped back. They were weak from lack of nourishment and their extremities were undoubtedly frost-bitten. The older man insisted by gestures (he could speak but few English words) that Kingston aid his son, first of all. The wireless operator seized the boy in his arms and staggered across the sink with him. He fastened him safely in the noose and gave the signal for those above to “hoist away.”