THE FLOATING MANUSCRIPT
When Sandy burst into the igloo with his precious find clutched to his
breast he found Dick asleep. He shook his chum out of the sleeping bag
in a hurry.
“What’s all the excitement about?” Dick mumbled rubbing the sleep out of
his eyes.
“Something from Corporal Thalman,” Sandy cried, thrusting the canteen
under Dick’s eyes.
Dick started forward as he read the words carved in the leather, and
uttered a cry of astonishment.
“Where’s an axe? Let’s break the bottle open and see what’s inside!
Won’t Corporal McCarthy open his eyes when he sees this!” Dick was even
more excited than Sandy.
A moment later they had split the bottle as carefully as they could and
from the inside extracted a tightly rolled strip of leather, about the
width of an ordinary sheet of writing paper.
The leather apparently had been cut from an old shirt. Unrolled, it
presented a mass of words and a crude map, carved in the leather by
something in the nature of a sharp stone.
“It’s a message from Corporal Thalman!” exclaimed Dick, deciphering the
initials, “C. T.” and the abbreviation for “Royal Northwest Mounted
Police.”
“And that map shows where he is!” Sandy cried.
“Right now it looks the same as Greek to me,” Dick admitted, frowning
over the wandering lines, crosses and data. “Let’s read the script and
see if that will help.”
The following is what the boys read from the strange manuscript:
“If Fate is kind and this bottle and message fall into friendly hands,
I desire the nearest post of the R.N.W. M.P. be notified that the
undersigned is now being unlawfully held a prisoner on a glacial
island several miles off the northern coast of Grant Land, about half
way between Cape Columbia and Cape Richards.
“Detailed to apprehend a half-breed Eskimo murderer, I picked up his
trail on the barrens and followed him to this island where a band of
outlaws, led by Mistak, surprised and captured me.
“I calculate I have been imprisoned about six months in an ice-sealed
pit at the bottom of a glacier, which seems to have been formed by an
eruption ages ago. The pit has an outlet above my head into one of the
large fissures in the top strata of the glacier, which I have tried to
locate by means of the accompanying map. One side of the pit is formed
of ice many feet thick. By weeks of work I cut my way through this
into a series of grottoes or caverns lined with crystallized ice.
However, I have so far been unable to find any outlet to the surface
of the glacier and the caverns are so cold that I cannot spend much
time in them.
“The pit is warmer due to what I believe to be hot springs miles
beneath me. A small underground stream of tepid, fresh water, tasting
slightly of sulphur, runs across the floor of the pit, out of one wall
into another, and upon this I shall set this canteen afloat, hoping by
some miracle of good fortune that it will reach the sea and there be
discovered.
“Mistak furnishes me every so often with a supply of seal blubber
which he drops down from the top of the pit. I do not know why he
keeps me alive, except out of fiendish desire to see me suffer.
“Anyone attempting to locate me may do so in two ways—by means of the
fissure into which this pit opens, or from the crystal grottoes. Since
I have been unable to find an outlet to the grottoes, that method of
reaching the pit seems impractical, and I have directed all my efforts
on this map toward guiding a rescuing party to the fissure.
“Provided Mistak does not neglect bringing me food for too long a
period, I shall be alive when this is read, though I notice some
symptoms of scurvy.
“I now set this canteen adrift with its message, trusting in
Providence to guide it into the hands of those who will understand the
suffering and peril of my plight, and act accordingly.
“Corporal James E. Thalman,
“R.N.W.M.P.
“August 15 (?) 1925.”
Dick and Sandy finished reading the message at about the same time, yet
they did not draw from it quite the same conclusions.
“Then I found the canteen after it had been floating and drifting for
nearly two months,” Sandy spoke, still awed by the importance of his
discovery.
“Yes, as Corporal Thalman hoped, his message found its way to the sea
from some underground stream,” Dick rejoined.
Upon re-examining the map they satisfied themselves that the glacial
island drawn there was the one they were now camping upon. They traced
the trail by which they had come along the east side of the ridge, and
rejoiced to find that the meteor stone indicated by the cross must be
identical with the one they had found. Estimating on a basis of the
scale of miles drawn by Corporal Thalman, they found they were encamped
not more than five miles from the point at which the Corporal had been
captured eight months before, and hardly thirty miles, allowing for
detours, from the actual prison pit.
“Oh, boy! This is more thrilling than looking for lost mines!” Sandy
cried exuberantly.
“It’s even more risky,” Dick returned, “and in this case it’s just as
difficult. There must be a lot of inaccuracies in this map. The location
here may be pretty near ten miles off. I wish the policemen were here to
help. This is really too big a job for us.”
“Wouldn’t it be a feather in our caps if we found Corporal Thalman all
by ourselves!” Sandy puffed out his chest.
Dick admitted that it would, though he reprimanded Sandy for his
exaggeration of their capabilities.
“Before we get ready to hunt for the Corporal we must draw a copy of
this map and leave it for Corporal McCarthy,” Dick directed. “If they
don’t return before we leave on a search for the fissure, the copy will
give them all the information they need to work on their own accord.”
An hour later the boys had completed a copy of the map and message,
detail by detail, and prepared for a few hours rest before they started
for the glacier.
[Illustration: Map]
The boys awakened after nearly eight hours sleep, to find that the
policemen had not yet returned. They immediately set about harnessing a
dog team and loading a sledge with a few days’ supplies. They intended
to hunt musk-oxen also on their trip inland, and in that way kill two
birds with one stone. Provided they failed to locate Corporal Thalman’s
prison, they could at least bring back a sledge load of musk-ox meat.
Since Sipsa and his Eskimos could be depended upon to take care of the
camp, Dick decided that Toma should go with them if he liked, and found
the Indian boy overjoyed at the opportunity to escape the dullness of
life at the supply base.
After bidding the grinning, moon-faced Sipsa good-bye, the boys started
out, driving their dog team at a gallop. It was not long before they
reached a point below the head of the glacial ridge from which they
could see the meteor stone near which they had built the cairn.
From there they began to count their strides—approximately 1,760 to a
mile, and three miles to the spot where Corporal Thalman had been
attacked and captured by Mistak and his band. Dick and Sandy both
counted their steps so they might check against each other when the
required distance was covered.
At last they reached a mass of boulders sticking up out of the snow
which was within a quarter mile of the distance on the map.
“This looks like a likely place for a man to be surprised and captured,”
said Dick, signaling them to halt. He referred to the map. “According to
the route laid out here, Mistak bore slightly to the left when he went
on with his captive.”
With this in mind they passed the boulders and came out on a broad,
snow-covered tundra stretching for several miles inland from the sea and
ending abruptly some miles south in towering walls of ice that marked
the position of the glacier.
Driving southwest, the three boys began the long trek across the tundra,
hoping they might soon sight the abandoned igloos indicated on the map
as the next landmark.
But two hours of steady mushing failed to raise anything resembling a
habitation. The tundra still stretched monotonously ahead of them, the
countless acres of snow glaring in their eyes as it reflected the sun’s
rays.
Dick called a halt and the three boys gathered about the sledge,
permitting the dogs to lie down and rest their tired legs.
“We’ll have to use our heads now,” said Dick. “Corporal Thalman has
either underestimated the distance from the point of his capture to the
igloos, or else we’re traveling in the wrong direction.”
“Well, I’d say,” put in Sandy, “that no Eskimo would build an igloo out
on this level plain where it would catch the full force of all the
storms that blew down from the pole.”
“You’re right, Sandy,” announced Dick. “Those igloos must have been
built where there was some sort of wind break. Suppose we swing around
due south until we get into the rough country on the outskirts of the
glacier.”
“That seems to be about the best plan,” Sandy rejoined. “It’s a cinch
there’s nothing north of us as far as the sea.”
“Me no savvy,” Toma muttered, and Dick promised to explain the map more
thoroughly when they pitched camp.
The distance to the glacier was deceiving. It was fully an hour after
they changed their course before they struck the first break in the
tundra and began to climb upward along the ravine down the trough of
which the glacier had flung out a finger centuries before.
When they had climbed to a height nearly a hundred feet above the tundra
they paused to reconnoiter. Approximating their position on Corporal
Thalman’s map, they judged themselves to be in a big bend in the
formation of the glacier. Far ahead, over the various hills and ridges,
they could see where the vast mass of ice broadened and began its slide
to the sea.
“You know what I think,” Dick broke a long silence, “those igloos are
right under the walls of the glacier where it flows down to the sea.”
“I wouldn’t wonder but what you’re right,” Sandy replied dubiously, “but
why not go on pretty slow so we can examine all the territory between us
and where the glacier turns?”
“Better yet,” Dick sanctioned. “We can’t be too thorough. For all we
know, every mistake we make in reading this map may be just like
pounding another nail in Corporal Thalman’s coffin.”
“Ugh!” Sandy shivered at the thought, as they started out again.
With an interval of some hundred yards between them, the boys proceeded,
Toma in the center driving the dog team. Almost any of the sheltered
spots in the vicinity of the glacier might hide half a dozen igloos, and
they were not going to pass up any likely places if they could help it.
The boys were growing weary, indeed, when Sandy, considerably in the
lead, stopped dead still upon a mound of ice, and let out a cheer like
an Indian war whoop.
“There they are! There they are!” his shout was faintly borne to the
ears of Dick and Toma.
The two forced their tired legs into a staggering run, which soon
brought them up with Sandy.
Below them, snug on the southern slope of a pyramid of glacial drift,
were the abandoned igloos.
They had located the second landmark on the trail to Corporal Thalman’s
prison!