rd, and had he not known the penalty for not returning a
landsman to his port under such conditions, the unprincipled seaman
would have carried him to Seattle, leaving Beth to shift for herself.
He reached home on a gasoline schooner some ten days after his
departure.

This same Beth, when spring came and she wished to go "outside,"
engaged a white guide to take her by dog team to Cape Prince of Wales,
where the mail steamer might be caught. It was late in the spring and
the ice was soft. They had been traveling for some time on the rough
shore ice when they discovered, much to their horror, that their ice
pan had broken loose from the shore and was drifting out to sea. They
hurried along the edge of it for some distance in the hope of finding a
bridge to shore. In this they were disappointed. Beth could not swim.
Fortunately the guide could. Leaping into the stinging water he swam
from one cake to the next one, leading the dogs. Beth clung to the
back of the sled and was thus brought ashore. After wading many
swollen torrents, they at last reached Cape Prince of Wales in safety.
This sounds very much like fiction but is fact and can be verified.

As to crossing Bering Straits and living with the Chukches in Siberia.
I did that very thing myself--went with a crew of Chukches I had never
seen, too. I was over there for only three days but might have stayed
the summer through in perfect safety. While there I saw a character
known as the French Kid, a white man who had crossed the Straits with
the natives late in the year and had wintered there.

Crossing twenty or more miles of floe ice might seem a trifle
improbable but here, too, actual performance bears me out. I sent the
mail to Thompson, the government teacher on the Little Diomede Island,
across 22 miles of floe ice by an Eskimo. This man had made the trip
many times before. It is my opinion that what an Eskimo can do, any
white man or hearty young woman can do.

Well, there you have it. I don't wish to make my fiction story seem
tame, or I might tell you more. As it is I hope I may have convinced
you that all the adventures of Lucile and Marian are probable and that
the author knows something about the wonderland in which the story is
set.

THE AUTHOR.

THE BLUE ENVELOPE

CHAPTER I

A MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE

At the center of a circular bay, forming a perfect horseshoe with a
sandy beach at its center and a rocky cliff on eithe