Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/199



EOFF often wondered what the others thought; for though they might not once speak of it, they must be thinking. To Geoff himself the cause of the fire was plain. It had broken out just where the heat of a lamp or spontaneous combustion from the oil of cleaning rags would have ignited gasoline leaking from the tanks which McNeal had ordered Latham to examine, and which Latham had said were all right when Geoff reminded him of them after their quarrel the evening before.

All day they worked, building the shelter of stones and wood and walling it up with such boxes and cans of their supplies as they had saved. Later in the winter, in an extremity, they might become Eskimos in the plan of their shelters; but now, building from the material of the ship, they divided their hut into two rooms for temporary occupation. With not 185