be neither of them
could have told.

The third day broke clear and cold with the wind still blowing a gale.
Lucile was the first to throw open the door. As it came back with a
bang, something fell from the beam above and rattled to the floor.

She stooped to pick it up.

"Look, Marian!" she exclaimed. "A key! A big brass key!"

Marian examined it closely.

"What can it belong to?"

"The wreck, perhaps."

"Probably."

"Looks like a steward's pass-key."

"But what would they save it for? You don't think--"

"If we could get out to the wreck we'd see."

"Yes, but we can't. There--"

"Look, Marian!" Lucile's eyes were large and wild.

"The white line!" gasped Marian, gripping her arm.

It was true. Before them lay the dark ocean still flecked with foam,
but at the horizon gleaming whiter than burnished silver, straight,
distinct, unmistakable, was a white line.

"And that means--"

"We're trapped!"

Lucile sank weakly into a chair. Marian began pacing the floor.

"Anyway," she exclaimed at last, "I can paint it. It will make a
wonderful study."

Suiting action to words, she sought out her paint-box and was soon busy
with a sketch, which, developing bit by bit, or rather, seeming to
evolve out of nothing, showed a native dressed in furs, shading his
eyes to scan the dark, tossing ocean. And beyond, the object of his
gaze, was the silvery line. When she had finished, she playfully
inscribed a title at the bottom:

"The Coming of the White Line."

As she put her paints away, something caught her eye. It was one
corner of the blue envelope with the strange address upon it.

"Ah, there you are still," she sighed. "And there you will remain for
nine months unless I miss my guess. I wish I hadn't kept my promise to
the college boy; wish I'd left you in the pigeon-hole at Cape Prince of
Wales."

Since the air was too chill, the wind too keen for travel, the girls
slept that night in the cabin. They awoke to a new world. The first
glimpse outside the cabin brought surprised exclamations to their lips.
In a single night the world appeared to have been transformed. The
"white line" was gone. So, too, was the ocean. Before them, as far as
the eye could reach, lay a mass of yellow lights and purple shadows,
ice-fields that had buried the sea. Only one object stood out, black,
bleak and bare before them--the hull of the wrecked and abandoned ship.

"Look!" said Lucile suddenly, "we can