what Rob called the
northwest corner of the heavens, striving to give these poor natives
who live in that land some sort of compensation for the terrible
sunless nights of the immeasurable Arctic winter.

Our young adventurers, be sure, had lost no time in this fine
opportunity for photography--an opportunity given to very few
travelers of any age or climate at this particular spot; for since the
great Klondike rush had straggled through, broken and failing, twenty
years before, few white persons indeed had ever stood upon these
shores.

"Run, Jesse, to our tent upon the beach!" called out John. "I'm out of
films. Get all we've got. We'll have to try and try again, so as to be
sure we're not missing anything."

"That's right," said Rob. "We don't know much about this light. It's
soft and faint, but it seems to cut the film, after all, as near as I
can tell. I'm going to make all sorts of times--from three seconds and
five seconds and ten seconds up to twenty and thirty seconds; and
with each of these times that I give it I'm going to use a different
stop. Somewhere, some of us will get a picture, I'm sure of that."

"Well," said John, looking at Jesse's hurrying form as he scurried
down the steep path to their tent upon the beach, "it would be too bad
to come this far and then fail."

It may be added that the boys did not fail, for certainly they brought
out from their trip what then were known as the best amateur negatives
ever made in that latitude; and of all the trophies of their northern
trips they have prized none so much as these pictures of their own, of
that strange spectacle of the great, mysterious North.

It was late that night, or early that morning, when at length they
closed their labors with the cameras, all fairly content. Uncle Dick
had left them to their own devices, feeling that if they got
results--as he felt sure they would--they would feel all the more
proud for having done so without the advice and aid of one older than
themselves. Indeed, he was beginning more and more to trust these
young lads to their own devices. Himself occupied with matters of
business which kept him very largely about the government office--as
might have been called the log barracks of the Northwest Mounted
Police which made the only representative of the law in that far-off
land--he for some time after the landing of the boat allowed the boys
to shift pretty much for themselves, with what results we have seen.

T