m cake to cake. He must take
advantage of every rise and fall of the heaving swells which disturbed
the great blanket winter had cast upon the bosom of the deep.

All this Johnny knew well. Guided only by the direction taken by the
moving cakes, he made his way across this danger zone, and out upon the
great floe, which though still drifting slowly northward, did not pile
and seemed as motionless as the shore ice itself.

While at the village at East Cape Johnny had made good use of his time.
He had located accurately the position of the Diomede Islands, half way
station in the Strait. He had studied the rate of the ice's drift
northward. He now was in a position to know, approximately, how far he
might go due east and how much he must veer to the south to counteract
the drift of the ice. He soon reckoned that he would make three miles an
hour over the uneven surface of the floe. He also reckoned that the floe
was making one mile per hour due north. He must then, for every mile he
traveled going east, do one mile to the south. He did this by going a
full hour's travel east, then one-third of an hour south.

So sure was he of his directions that he did not look up until the rocky
cliffs of Big Diomede Island loomed almost directly above him.

There was a native village on this island where he hoped to find food
and rest and, perhaps, some news of the Russian and Hanada. He located
the village at last on a southern slope. This village, as he knew,
consisted of igloos of rock. Only poles protruding from the rocks told
him of its location.

As he climbed the path to the slope he was surprised to be greeted only
by women and children. They seemed particularly unkempt and dirty. At
last, at the crest of the hill, he came upon a strange picture. A young
native woman tastily dressed was standing before her house, puffing a
turkish cigaret. She was a half-breed of the Spanish type, and Johnny
could imagine that some Spanish buccaneer, pausing at this desolate
island to hide his gold, had become her father.

She asked him into an igloo and made tea for him, talking all the while
in broken English. She had learned the language, she told him, from the
whalers. She spoke cheerfully and answered his questions frankly. Yes,
his two friends had been here. They had gone, perhaps; she did not know.
Yes, he might cross to Cape Prince of Wales in safety she thought. But
Johnny had the feeling that her mind was filled with the dread of