tion, stared in silence for a
full minute before he spoke:

"If it is," he said slowly, "there's only one salvation for us. We've got
to get down out of the clouds. The last time I saw that riot of color it
was on the shore of the ocean, or very near it, and to drift over the
Arctic Ocean in this crazy craft is to invite death."

He sprang for the door which led to the narrow plank-way about the cabin
and to the rigging where the valve-cord must hang suspended.

CHAPTER XI

DANGLING IN MID AIR

Before dawn, the morning after his interview with Mazie, Johnny was away
for the camp of the Mongols. There was a moist freshness in the air which
told of approaching spring, yet winter lingered.

It was a fair-sized cavalcade that accompanied him; eight burly Russians
on horseback and six in a sled drawn by two stout horses. For himself he
had secured a single horse and a rude sort of cutter. He was not alone in
the cutter. Beside him sat a small brown person. This person was an
Oriental. There could be no mistake about that. Mazie had told him only
that here was his interpreter through whom all his dealings with the
Mongols would be done.

He wondered much about the interpreter. He had met with some fine
characters among the brown people. There had been Hanada, his school
friend, and Cio-Cio-San, that wonder-girl who had traveled with him. He
had met with some bad ones too, and that not so long ago. His experiences
at the mines had made him, perhaps, unduly suspicious.

He did not like it at all when he found, after a long day of travel and
two hours of supper and pitching camp, with half the journey yet to go,
that this little yellow person proposed to share his skin tent for the
night. At first he was inclined to object. Yet, when he remembered the
feeling that existed between these people and the Russians, he realized at
once that he could scarcely avoid having the interpreter for a tent-mate.

Nothing was said as the two, with a candle flickering and flaring between
them, prepared to slip into their sleeping-bags for the night.

When, at last, the candle was snuffed out, Johnny found that he could not
sleep. The cold air of the long journey had pried his eyes wide open; they
would not go shut. He could think only of perils from small yellow people.
He was, indeed, in a position to invite treachery, since he carried on his
person many pounds of gold. He, himself, did not know its exact value;
certainly it