er
foot.

"Get all the sleep you can," she said. "We'll leave here at dawn
to-morrow, and there'll be little rest for any of us to-morrow night."

At daylight next morning she roused us. She was dressed, except that she
wore her combing-jacket, and her hair was loose round her face.

"Aggie, you make an omelet in a hurry, and, Lizzie, you will have to get
the horses."

"I'll do nothing of the sort," I said, sitting up on the ground. "We've
got a man here for that. Besides, I have to set the table."

"Very well," Tish replied, "we can stay here, I dare say. Bill's busy at
something I've set him to doing."

"Whose fault is it," I demanded, "that we are here in 'Greenland's Icy
Mountains'? Not mine. Id never heard of the dratted place. And those
horses are five miles away by now, most likely."

"Go and get a cup of tea. You'll have a little sense then," said Tish,
not unkindly. "And as for what Bill's doing, he's making revolvers.
Where's your writing ink?"

_I had none!_ I realized it that moment. I had got it out at the first
camp to record in my diary the place, weather, temperature, and my own
pulse rate, which I had been advised to watch, on account of the effect
of altitude on the heart, and had left the bottle sitting on a stone.

When I confessed this to Tish, she was unjustly angry and a trifle
bitter.

"It's what I deserve, most likely, for bringing along two incompetents,"
was her brief remark. "Without ink we are weaponless."

But she is a creature of resource, and a moment later she emerged from
the tent and called to Bill in a cheerful tone.

"No ink, Bill," she said, "but we've got blackberry cordial, and by
mixing it with a little soot we may be able to manage."

Aggie demurred loudly, as there are occasions when only a mouthful of
the cordial enables her to keep doing. But Tish was firm. When I went to
the fire, I found Bill busily carving wooden revolvers, copying Tish's,
which lay before him. He had them done well enough, and could have gone
for the horses as easy as not, but he insisted on trimming them up.
Mine, which I still have, has a buffalo head carved on the handle, and
Aggie's has a wreath of leaves running round the barrel.

In spite of Aggie's wails Tish poured a large part of the blackberry
cordial into a biscuit pan, and put in a chip of wood.

"It makes it red," she said doubtfully. "I never saw a red revolver,
Bill."

"Seems like an awful waste," Bill said. But having n