xpedition had a good strong heart. Low temperatures are hard on bad
hearts. Langlois was exceptionally well equipped in this matter. Indeed,
he told me that he had climbed Mount Evans in Colorado last summer,
fourteen thousand and two hundred feet, without a murmur from his heart.
Couldn't be that."

"Poison?" suggested Johnny.

"Not a sign of that either. Of course, to be sure of that, one must make a
post-mortem examination. Let's get him out of this damp, black hole."

They were soon moving out of the dark and forbidding interior of the mine
toward the welcome sunlight that flooded the entrance.

As they approached this entrance, the unreliable flashlight flickered out
for a second, and, in that second, Johnny experienced a distinct shock.
Again, it seemed to him that he caught the gleam of a round, yellow ball
of light, such as one sees when looking toward a cat in the dark. When the
light flashed on, Pant had moved, but Johnny concluded that he might
easily have been standing where the ball of light had shown.

As he prepared to leave the mine, Johnny paused for a moment, trying to
sense once more that strange earth shudder. It seemed to him that it was
less distinct here than it had been further back in the mine. But of this
he could not be sure. It might easily be that the slight sounds and the
sensations of light and air here dulled his sensibilities, making it
harder for him to catch the shudder.

The post-mortem revealed no signs of poison. They buried Langlois the next
day in the grave that had been picked and blasted out of the solidly
frozen earth of the hillside looking over the ice-blocked sea.

It was a solemn but picturesque scene that struck Johnny's eye as he
neared the grave. Before him stood his comrades with bowed and uncovered
heads. In the distance stretched the unmeasured expanse of the
ice-whitened sea. Beyond, on the other side, lay the equally unmeasured
expanse of snow-whitened land. Far in the distance stretched the endless
chain of mountains, which to-day seemed to smoke with the snow blown a
quarter mile above their summits. In the foreground, not a hundred yards
away, was a group of perhaps fifty people. These were Chukches, natives,
very like the Eskimos of Alaska. They had come to witness from afar the
strange scene of the "alongmeet's" (white man's) burial.

The scene filled Johnny with a strange sense of awe. Yet, as he came
nearer to the grave, he frowned. He had thought that