up she
sprang and with one more whirl sent the string singing through the air.

The young ducks, craning their necks with curiosity, did not move until
something came crashing at them, and a wildly frantic girl sprang
toward them.

To the duck about whose neck the string had encircled, this move was
too late, for Marian was upon him. And a moment later, looking very
much like the old woman who went to market, with a dead gray duck
dangling from her right arm, Marian returned in triumph.

"Oh, Lucile," she cried, "I got him! I got him!"

"Fine! You shall have a medal," said Lucile.

"But how _will_ we cook him?"

"Well," said Lucile, after a moment's thought, "it's growing colder;
going to freeze hard. They say freezing meat is almost as good as
cooking it. I don't know--"

"Look!" cried Marian suddenly, balancing herself at the crest of a high
pile of ice. "What's all that black a little way over there to the
left? It's not like ice. Do you suppose it could be an island?"

"Is the ice piling there?" Lucile asked, clinging to her friend's side.
"No, it isn't, so it can't be an island, for the island would stop the
ice as it flows and make it pile up."

"But what can it be?"

"We can't go over there, for we can't see our flag from there."

"Yes, we can," said Marian. "I'll take off my petticoat and put it on
this ice-pile. We can see it from there, and when we get back here we
can see the flag."

This new beacon was soon established. Then, with trembling and eager
footsteps, the girls hastened to what appeared to be an oasis in a
desert of ice.

CHAPTER XIII

STRANGE DISCOVERIES

It was a strange sight that met the eyes of the two girls as they
paused halfway to the dark patch on the surface of the ice which loomed
like a giant's shadow in the snow-fog. With eager feet they dashed on,
leaping narrow chasms and stumbling over ice barriers in their mad rush.

The revelation which came as they rounded the last pile of ice was both
a surprise and a disappointment. Great heaps of ashes, piles of
bottles and tin cans, frozen masses of garbage; junk of every
description, from a rusty tin dipper to a discarded steel range, met
their eyes.

"It's a graveyard," murmured Marian, "a graveyard of things people
don't want."

"That some people didn't want!" corrected the more practical Lucile.
"Marian, we're rich!"

"Rich?" Marian stared.

"Why, yes! Don't you see? There's an old clothes