garments. Her touch was light as a feather, yet she
appeared to have a wonderful sense of location in the tips of those
small, slender fingers.

Once the man moved and groaned. Light as a leaf she sprang away, the
dagger gleaming in her hand. There were reasons why she did not wish to
kill that man; other reasons than the fact that she was a woman and
shrank from slaying, and yet she was in a perilous position. Should it
come to a choice between killing him or suffering herself, she would
kill him.

Again the man's body relaxed in slumber. Again she glided to his side
and continued her search. When at last she straightened up, it was with
a look of despair. The thing she sought was not there.

When the Russian awoke some time later it was with the feeling that he
had been prodded in the side. The first sensation to greet him after
that was the savory smell of cooked meat. Unable to believe his senses,
he opened his eyes and sat up. Before him was a tin pan partly filled
with strips of reddish-brown meat and squares of fried fat. The dish was
still hot.

Like a dog that fears to have his food snatched from him, he glared
about him and a sort of snarl escaped his lips. Then he fell upon the
food and ate it ravenously. With the last morsel in his hand, he looked
about him for signs of the human being who had befriended him. But in
his eye was no sign of gratitude, rather the reverse--a burning fire of
suspicion and hate lurked in their sullen depths. His gaze finally
rested for a moment on the meat in his hand. Then his face blanched. The
meat had been neatly cut by an instrument keen as a razor.

* * * * *

The steam-whaler, Karluke, a whole year overdue, pushing her way south
through the ice-infested Strait, her crew half mutinous, and her food
supply low, was subjected to two vexatious delays. Once she halted to
pick up a man who signaled her from the top of a shattered tower of wood
which topped an ice pile. The man was a Russian. Again, the boat paused
to take on board a youth, whom they supposed to be a Chukche hunter who
had been carried by the floes from his native shores.

The Russian paid them well for his passage to Seattle. The supposed
Chukche was sent to the galley to become cook's helper.

This Chukche boy was no other than the Jap girl. She realized at once
the position she was in; a perilous enough one, once her identity was
disclosed, and she did all in her power to