Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/119

Rh missed them till now. The piles stood north and south, the northern heap plainly the larger. They were separated, apparently, by about five paces.

"An Aurora type of cairns!" Koehler also recognised. "Two, fifteen feet apart, the larger to the north."

The four hastened, Geoff as before leading, and this time Latham came with the other two.

"The larger would contain the message," the doctor called as Geoff reached them.

"I know." He was tearing the stones away; now the others helped him.

"Look for anything which could be sealed; a little bottle, can, thermometer tube or anything that would keep out water."

Geoff picked up the fragments of a small glass tube.

"Here's something that might have kept out water, but hasn't."

The doctor, taking it, recognised it as a section of barometer tube which had been sealed at both ends, and, judging from the pulp upon the glass, once had contained papers. But the tumbling of the stones in the cairn had broken