etched arm. He had been
absorbed in the distance. All else had been forgotten. He found himself
gazing down upon what appeared to be a cascading sea of phosphorescent
light. He recognized it instantly, and the fiery heart of Unaga was
forgotten.

A mighty glacier barred the way, and the peak on which they stood was
its highest point. It stretched out far ahead. It reached beyond such
range of vision as the Arctic night permitted. It sloped away down,
down, so gradually, yet so deeply, so widely that it warned him of the
opening of the jaws of a mighty valley, through the heart of which there
probably flowed the broad bosom of a very great river. The play of the
phosphorescent light was the reflection of Unaga's lights caught by the
myriad facets of broken ice upon its tumbled surface.

Steve nodded.

"Yes. We make this," he cried, in a fashion to forbid all discussion.
Then after a pause that gave his decision due effect: "There's a valley
away out there. And I guess it'll likely hand us the things we got to
know. We've beaten those darn hills. We've beaten the snow and ice--and
the cold. The things we're going to find down there need beating, too."

He turned from the barrier which left him undismayed. A great light was
shining in his eyes as he passed Julyman by. They rested eagerly,
questioningly, upon the unemotional face of Oolak whose keen
understanding he knew to be profound.

"Well?" he demanded in the fashion of a man aware that his question is
not in vain.

Oolak turned. He raised his face, and his sensitive nostrils distended
with a deep intake of breath. A moment later he made a swift gesture
with the gee-pole on which he had been supporting himself.

"I mak' him smell. So!"

He spoke with unusual animation.

Steve had been seeking and waiting for just such words.

"You smell--what?" he demanded.

"Oolak smell him all sweet--lak'--lak'----"

Steve interrupted with a nod.

"I know," he cried. "Like--like----"

But that which he would have said remained unspoken. There was no need
for words. The rest was in his eyes, in his voice. Oolak's corroboration
of the evidence of his own senses meant the final triumph he was
seeking.

CHAPTER XIV

THE VALLEY OF DREAMS

Steve's dream of triumph was brief. Born at the moment of his first
sight of the burning heart of Unaga it lived to provide a stimulant for
jaded mind and body at a time of need. Then he awoke to realities such
as he had n