Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/140

126 "Listen," said McNeal gently. "They're telling us more."

"Hedon left here alone a year ago last June to try for the south over the sea ice!"

Then the boat was alongside, and Geoff, with the messages, jumped up and was pulled upon the Viborg's deck. Margaret seized the sheets of Hedon's record and stood staring at them, tears in her eyes at first making her unable to read, able only to know that the pages in her hand bore Eric's writing. She lifted the sheets to her lips and kissed them; and, as Latham came and stood beside her, she met his eyes.

"You see he's alive!" she said to him, half in the humbleness of grateful joy, yet half too in defiance. "You see he's alive. I knew he must be alive."

"He was alive," Latham said quietly, with something of the tone of a correction.

She seemed not to hear him. In triumph, tempered by sorrow as she came to the report of the leader's death, she read aloud the record as Koehler had read it to the three others in the cabin.