's enough for a dozen tea parties.
Oh, joy! here are three pilot biscuits!"
"Pilot biscuits!" Lucile danced about on the ice.
These large brown disks of hardtack, so often despised, would not have
been half so welcome had they been solid gold.
"Well, I guess that's about all," but Marian smiled. "I'm hungry
already, but we daren't eat anything yet. We'll save these and eat the
deer meat first that we brought along."
"We'll be pretty awful hungry, I am afraid," said Lucile, "before we
leave the ocean. But what worries me just now is a drink. Do you
suppose we could find an ice-pool of fresh water?"
A short search found them the desired pool, and each drank to her
heart's content. They then sat down upon the top of the kiak for a
brief consultation. After talking matters over they decided that the
best thing they could do was to remain by the kiak until the fog
cleared. It was true that the kiak, carefully managed, would carry
them across the break in the floe, but, once across, they would be no
better off than before, since they had no way of determining
directions. Furthermore, neither of them had ever handled a kiak and
they knew all too well what a spill meant in that stinging water.
"Guess we'd better stick right here," said Marian, and Lucile agreed.
"Now," suggested Lucile, "we'll put your middy on a paddle and set it
up as a sign of distress; then, since the ice isn't piling, I think we
might both sleep a little while."
The flag was soon hoisted, and the girls, with the sealskin square
beneath them, lay down under the deerskins and attempted to sleep. But
the deerskins were not large enough to cover them, and kept sliding
off. They were chilled through and sleep was impossible.
"Lucile," said Marian at last, "I believe we could set the kiak up and
bank it solidly into place, then creep into it and sleep there."
"We might," said Lucile doubtfully.
The kiak was soon set, and, after many doublings and twistings, with
much laughter they managed to slide down into it, and there, with two
of the deerskins for a mattress and two for covers, they at last fell
asleep in one another's arms, as peacefully as children in a
trundle-bed.
"Oh, Marian, you're too--too chubby!" Lucile laughed, as she attempted
to struggle from the bean-pod-like bed, after they had slept for some
time.
Their first glance at the break in the floe told them it had widened
rather than narrowed. A look skyward s
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