road in the world. All the tremendous
pressure of the Polar Seas forcing the ice to the southward was checked
by the land masses of Siberia and Alaska. The ice, twisted and broken,
crushed and mangled, piled in a welter of frozen confusion along the
shore. Darkness set in before we came to the worst of it, and a faint
moon gave little light for such a road. For fifteen miles there was not
ten feet of level ground. Though the temperature was thirty below zero,
Artisarlook and I were wet to the skin with perspiration from the
violence of the work. We would have to get under the heavy sled and lift
it to the top of an ice hummock sometimes as high as our shoulders or
even higher and then ease it down on the other side. Three times out of
four it would capsize.

"'It was a continuous jumble of dogs, sleds, men and ice--particularly
ice--and it would be hard to tell which suffered most, men or dogs. Once
in helping the sled over a bad place, I was thrown nearly nine feet down
a slide, landing on the back of my head with the sled on me. Our sleds
were racked and broken, our dogs played out and we ourselves scarce able
to move when we finally reached Mr. Lopp's house at the Cape.'"

"Glorious!" cried Eric, his eyes shining; "they won through!"

"Yes, they got through all right," the whaler answered. "They still had
a terrible journey ahead of them, but success was sure. Two or three
days later Dr. Call reported with Artisarlook's herd. Lopp, of course,
was an expert in handling deer an', besides, knew the country well. With
sleds and over four hundred reindeer, equipped in every way except for
provisions, Jarvis started for the north. He met Bertholf at the
appointed meeting-place, Bertholf having done miracles in crossing the
divide with the provisions.

"Meantime Lopp took a chance with the deer that no one less experienced
in local conditions dared ha' done. In the teeth of a blizzard he forced
the deer herd over the ice of Kotzebue Sound, miles away from land.
Though he himself was badly frostbitten, an' though every one of the
herders arrived on the further shore with severe frost-bites, the
crossing was achieved, savin' several weeks o' time.

"So, with the deer comin' over the mountains, where they could find
moss, an' with the Coast Guard men coming up the coast in the dog teams
Bertholf had brought, rescue came up to us on Point Barrow.

"I've seen some strange sights in my time an' I've lived all my life
with