ding ski, gasped with astonishment when he found the long
runner broken sharply in the middle.

"That's fine!" he shouted. "This runner's out of business!"

Roy ran to the rear where the car had stopped and found underneath the
snow a rocky ledge.

"She hit this!" he exclaimed. "Can't we tie her up?"

Norman was plainly in doubt but they cleared away the surrounding snow
and found that, instead of a single break, a section of the runner had
been shattered. Two jagged ends of wood extended into the soft snow.

"If you'll find any way to fix them," exclaimed Norman, "maybe we can get
a start. But it looks to me as if we'd have to make a new runner."

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Roy, beating his numbing hands together. "We can
fix 'er."

The two boys made this attempt and, as often as they thought they had
patched up the shattered ski and mounted into the car in attempts to make
a start, the patched strip of wood would part and the chassis would lunge
again into the snow.

After a half hour of attempts of this kind, Roy recalled the dog sled in
the distant hut of the paralyzed Indian and, in desperation, after four
o'clock, for it was now getting desperately cold, he secured Norman's
consent to a trip back to the Indian's cabin and the securing of at least
a part of the sled to patch up their machine.

The winter days were now growing short and when Roy hurried away into the
gray woods night was fast coming on. Nor did he find an easy task before
him. In the end it was necessary to pay the paralytic twenty-five dollars
before he could secure possession of the sled. As he made his way back to
his waiting companion, he had to stick to the trails that they had
previously made, for in the woods darkness had already come.

At the airship camp he found Norman had put in his waiting time in
collecting a pile of fallen timber. It was now so cold that this served a
double purpose--they needed the warmth and it served to illuminate the
vicinity.

The benumbed Roy also found tea ready and, better yet, a generous piece
of moose meat frying in the edge of the fire. These, with some broken
bannock heated in the fat of the meat, gave the boys a welcome supper.
Then, piling new wood on the fire, they began again the task of repairing
the chassis. Here they were handicapped by the darkness, as they were
afraid to get the monoplane and its reservoirs of gasoline too near the
blazing camp fire.

Finally they solved this difficulty by