Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/142

128 "Exactly," said Latham, "a year ago last June."

"And would have built cairns on the shores south of here."

"You've seen, of course, by the date of that record that the message from the wild goose was what I said it must be, a fraud?"

"But you've seen what I knew all along—that Eric Hedon is not dead. He is not dead!"

Latham turned without a word from the land and looked back over the sea to the south. The morning was clear and sunny, and as far as the eye reached only open water stretched; and all knew that for mile after mile beyond the grim, green horizon was water where the ice must have broken up early and treacherously in the spring of the year before—the ice over which Eric Hedon alone must have tried to travel.

"If he reached land again south of here," Latham said quietly, "we will find his cairns. He was very definite about that in his report."

"So let's follow him as fast as we can," Margaret cried.

McNeal looked at Latham, who nodded. They pulled up the boat and lashed it again to