om them, it swept
on to the south with a silence that was more appalling than had been
the grinding scream of a tidal wave beneath the ice.

"Lucile! Lucile!" she fairly screamed as she came down to the surface
of the pan. "Lucile! Wake up! We are lost! He is lost!"

* * * * * *

What had happened to the young college boy had been this: He had
hastened to the north in search of the trail. Rover, with nose close
to the ice, had searched diligently for the scent. For a long time his
search had been unrewarded, but at last, with a joyous bark, he sprang
away across an ice-pan.

The boy followed him far enough to make sure that he had truly found
the trail, then, calling him back, turned to retrace his steps.

Great was his consternation when he discovered the cleavage in the
floe. Hopefully he had at first gone east along the channel in search
of a possible passage. He found none. After racing for a mile, he
turned and retraced his steps to the point where he had first come upon
open water. From there he hurried west along the channel. Another
twenty minutes was wasted. No possible crossing-place could be found.

He then sat down to think. He thought first of his companions. That
they were in a dire plight, he realized well. That they would be able
to devise any plan by which they could find their way to any shore, he
doubted; yet, as he thought of it, his own position seemed more
critical. The trail he had found would now be useless. He was north
of the break in the floe. Land lay to the south of it. He had no way
to cross. In such circumstances, the dog with his keen sense of smell,
and his compass with its unerring finger, were equally useless.

"Nothing to do but wait," he mumbled, so he sat down patiently to wait.

And, as he waited, the snow-fog settled down over all.

CHAPTER XI

"WITHOUT COMPASS OR GUIDE"

It was with a staggering sense of hopelessness that the two girls on
the bosom of the Arctic floe saw the snow-fog settle down.

"It's likely to last for days, and by that time--" Marian's lips
refused to frame the words that expressed their condition when the
snow-fog lifted.

"By that time--" echoed Lucile. "But no, we must do something.
Surely, there is some way!"

"Without compass or guide?" Marian smiled at the impossibility of there
being a solution.

Unconsciously, she had repeated the first line of an old song. Lucile
said ove