hen he sank down again. Now she was but three rods away,
now two, now one. Now she was within ten feet of the still motionless
quarry.

Stretching every muscle for a spring like a cat, she suddenly darted
forward. At the next instant she hurled the harpoon deep into the seal's
side. She had him! Through her body pulsated thrills of wild triumph
which harkened back to the days of her primitive ancestry. Then for a
second she wavered. She was a woman. But she was hungry. Tomorrow she
might be starving.

Her knife flashed. A stream of red began dyeing the ice. A moment later,
the creature's muscles relaxed.

The Japanese girl, Cio-Cio-San, sat up and began to think. Here was
food, but how was it to be prepared? To think of eating raw seal meat
was revolting, yet here on the floe there was neither stove nor fuel.

Slowly and carefully she stripped the skin from the carcass. Beneath
this she found a two-inch layer of blubber, which must be more than
ninety per cent oil. Under this was a compact mass of dark meat. This
would be good if it was cooked. She sat down to think again. The fat
seemed to offer a solution. It would burn if she had matches. She felt
over the parka for pockets, and, with a little cry of joy, she found in
one several matches wrapped in a bit of oiled seal skin. Every native
carried them.

Hastily she stripped off a bit of fat and having lighted it, watched it
flare up and burn rapidly. She laughed and clapped her hands.

But before she could cut off a bit of meat to roast over its flames, the
soft ice began melting beneath it and the flames flickered out with a
snapping flutter.

This would not do. There must be some other way found. Rising, she drove
her harpoon into the snow at the crest of an ice pile. To this she
fastened her deer skin, that it might act as a beacon to guide her back
to her food supply. Then she turned about the ice pile and began
wandering in search of she hardly knew what.

She at last came upon some old ice, with cakes ground round and
discolored with age and then with a little cry of joy she started
forward. The thing she saw had been discarded as worthless long ago;
some gasoline schooner's crew had thrown it overboard. It was an empty
five-gallon can which had once held gasoline. It was red with rust, but
she pounced upon it and hurried away.

Once safely back at her lodge she used the harpoon to cut out a door in
the upper end of the can. After cutting several holes