Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/120

106 it; the melting snow and rain long before had made a mush of the paper. Nothing could be read from that.

"But we now know that Hedon or Thomas must have got here," Koehler said, as he put down the pulp at last.

"That's not certain," denied Latham.

"Not certain; no." The doctor looked at him. "But we'll find out at the cabin who was here."

That some one had been on the island was more evident every hour. Scraps of gear and cans told the passage of a man—or men—by a route different from that travelled by Koehler, Brunton, McNeal and Linn on their retreat two years before. They slept that night where apparently another camp had been. Starting off early the next morning, by noon they reached a slope which looked down on the northern shore of the island and showed far off on the edge of a little bay the dark dot of the Aurora depot shack facing the endless white wastes of the polar sea.

There was no movement about it, and as nearer and nearer they came, still they saw no