nd vegetables, but we
could not see it.

By and by we were past most of the water lanes, and the ice was better.
At half-past nine o'clock in the evening the sky was exceedingly grand,
and a song of gratitude welled up in my heart, for this was another
world from the one we had just left, and I no longer wondered at
Mollie's love of hunting in the fresh air, under the beautiful skies,
and with her freedom to travel wherever she liked.

With her I felt perfectly safe. No harm could come to me when Mollie led
the way, and my confidence in the native men was equally strong; for
were they not as familiar with ice and water as with land? I soon saw
that we were headed toward the island, though I did not know why, and by
this time Mollie was far ahead, also that we were being followed by a
dog-team from Chinik, which puzzled me, for I had not heard that others
were going out hunting for seal, or starting for the Home, which was my
destination.

When we reached the north end of the small island Mollie ran up the path
like a deer, I following, as did the natives, leaving the dogs to rest
upon the ice. From a hole in the rocks Koki now hauled his kyak or
small skin boat, where he had left it from a former trip, and dragging
it down upon the ice, he lashed it upon the small sled to be carried
still farther.

The dog-team, which I had seen following in the distance, had now come
up with us, and I heard one man say to the other: "There is Mrs.
Sullivan," but I did not recognize the voice. When they came nearer, we
found it to be two men from camp who were going out to the schooners to
buy fruit and vegetables, and they wanted to get a dog belonging to them
which Mollie had borrowed and had hitched into her team. A change of
dogs was then made, and we started--Mollie and I on her big sled, the
other two following.

We now skirted the rocky cliffs, and found the ice hummocky between
great, deep cracks where the water was no longer white, but dark and
forbidding. Sometimes Koki suddenly started the dogs to one side to
avoid dark-looking holes in the ice, the dogs leaping over seams which
quickly lay beneath us as the fore and hinder parts of our sled bridged
the crevasse of ugly water.

Now the sled swayed from side to side as the dogs made sudden curves or
dashes, then a big hummock of ice and snow had to be crossed, and one
end of the sled went up while the other went down. I was holding to the
side rails with both hands, an