turn about it. All the windows had been boarded up with
rough lumber. There were two doors. These were fastened with padlock
and chain. An examination of the locks showed that keys had not been
used in them for months.

Lucile's eyes were caught by poles and some platforms to the right,
along the rocky shore. She walked in that direction.

"Marian, come here!" she cried presently. Marian came running. "Look!
Here's a whole native village! They've built their homes out of rocks.
See! It's like tunneling into the side of the mountain. Must be homes
for a hundred people!"

"And not a soul here! How strange!"

"Not even a dog!" Lucile's own voice sounded strangely hollow to her,
as if echoed by the walls of a tomb.

CHAPTER XV

TWO RED RIDING HOODS

Before Phi struck out for the unknown land which had so suddenly thrust
itself into his line of vision, he paused to ask himself the question
whether he had come upon some island or a point on the mainland.
Finding himself unable to answer the question, he at once set plans for
reaching that land.

The rifle, now a useless incumbrance, he left leaning against an
up-ended cake of ice. That shore, if not lifted high by a mirage, was
at least ten miles away. And ten miles to a boy and dog who have
appeased their hunger for three days with two small birds, is no mean
distance.

Bravely they struck out. Now they crossed a broad, level pan and now
climbed a gigantic pile of bowlder-like fragments that rolled and
slipped at their every move, threatening to send them crashing to the
surface of the ice-pans or to submerge them in the deep, open pool of
stinging water that lay at its base.

Exercising every precaution, the boy made his way slowly forward. More
than once he paused to wait for the dog, time after time lifting him
over a dangerous crevice or assisting him in climbing a particularly
difficult barrier.

"I know you'd help me if you could," he said with a smile as he
moistened his cracked lips, "so if we go down, we go together."

Time after time, dizzy-headed and faint, he sat down to rest, only to
rise after a moment and struggle on again. At times, too, he was
obliged to shake himself free from the spells of drowsiness which the
chill wind and brisk Arctic air threw over him.

"We--we'll make it, old boy. We--we'll make it," he repeated over and
over.

Little by little the landscape broadened before them. The bit of
rugged shore