s addressing the
council.

His words were strange to the prisoners, but they could tell by his
gestures he was describing how he had found the white men, who had come
in the wonderful airship. At times the narrator would point in the
direction of the captives. Again he would show by gestures how the
airship had settled down on the ice. He was interrupted by many
questions and, at the end of his tale, a silence fell over the crowd of
natives.

Then, as if by some signal, all the lights save the large central lamp
were extinguished. By the glow from that the prisoners could see their
captors, one by one, filing from the cave.

"They are leaving us all alone," said the inventor. "At any rate they
have done us no harm, and perhaps may not. If we could only get back to
the ship; that would be all I'd ask," and he sighed as he thought of his
beloved craft.

For a long while the captives sat in silence, brooding over their fate.
Worn out by the trials of the day, the two farmers at last fell asleep.
Washington, too, was soon snoring, and the two boys felt drowsy. The
regular breathing of the professor told that he, also, had forgotten his
troubles in dreamland, and Andy was about to drop off nodding, when he
was startled by a soft foot-fall. He sat up on the icy floor of the cave
where he had stretched himself out.

"Who's there?" he asked sharply.

"Sh! Ingliss!" exclaimed a soft voice. "No spik! Me like Ingliss! Me
Dirola!"

"Who are you?" asked the old hunter again, but in a whisper.

"Me like Ingliss!" was the reply. "They kill! Me save! You come! All
Ingliss!"

Then, into the glare of the big lamp, glided the strange woman who had
brought the milk.

CHAPTER XVII

FIGHTING FOR THE SHIP

"Professor Henderson! Wake up!" called Andy. "Hey, boys, Bill, Tom,
Washington! This may mean something!"

In an instant the prisoners were sitting up, and blinking in the
direction of the big lamp.

"What is it all about?" asked Amos Henderson.

"As near as I can make out this lady is going to save us," replied the
hunter. "She says the natives want to kill us, and that she likes the
English, though how she can talk United States is more than I can
understand."

Dirola, as the Esquimaux woman had called herself, approached the old
inventor, and, kneeling down in front of him, spoke rapidly in her
broken tongue.

"Me save you!" she repeated. "Me Dirola! Me from way, way off," and she
pointed to the north. "