ead," he said.

The seaman fumbled in his pocket, and taking out a slip of wood handed
it to his companion.

"That's what I came to bring you," he said quietly.

Wyllard's eyes grew very grave as he gazed at the thing. It was a slip
of willow which will grow close up to the limits of the eternal ice,
and it bore a rude representation of the British ensign union down,
which signifies "In distress." Besides this there were one or two
indecipherable words scratched on it, and three common names rather
more clearly cut. Wyllard recognised every one of them.

"How did you get it?" he asked, in tense suspense.

The sailorman once more felt in his pocket and took out a piece of
paper cut from a chart. He flattened it out on the table, and it
showed, as Wyllard had expected, a strip of the Kamtchatkan coast.

"I guess I needn't tell you where that is," he said, and pointed to the
parallel of latitude that ran across it. "Dunton gave it me. He was
up there late last season well over on the western side. A
north-easterly gale fell on them, and took most of the foremast out of
her. I understand they tried to lash on a boom or something as a jury
mast, but it hadn't height enough to set much forward canvas, and that
being the case she wouldn't bear more than a three-reefed mainsail.
Anyway, they couldn't do anything with her on the wind, and as it kept
heading them from the east she sidled away down south through the
Kuriles into the Yellow Sea. They got ice-bound somewhere, which
explains why Dunton only fetched Vancouver a week ago."

[Illustration: "'I guess I needn't tell you where that is,' he said,
and pointed to the parallel of latitude that ran across."]

"But the message?"

"When they were in the thick of their troubles they hove her to not far
off the beach with ice about, and a Husky came down on them in some
kind of boat."

"A Husky?" said Wyllard, who knew he meant an Esquimaux.

"That's what Dunton called him, but I guess he must have been a
Kamtchadale or a Koriak. Anyway, he brought this strip of willow, and
he had Tom Lewson's watch. Dunton traded him something for it. They
couldn't make much of what he said except that he'd got the message
from three white men somewhere along the beach. They couldn't make out
how long ago."

"Dunton tried for them?"

"How could he? She'd hardly look at the wind, and the ice was piling
up on the coast close to lee of him. He hung on a week or two with