Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/78

64 coast which they were nearing. The sun was high and warm in a clear sky; and as it was July the ice was cleared from the shore. The snow, save for a few protected patches, was gone; and the green of the grass, which had won for the land its name, brightened great patches of the hillsides. Three of the guests, Margaret and Geoff and Latham, gazed upon this land for the first time. Koehler, who had been surgeon on the Aurora, had been one of Bradley's guests on the Inca before.

"Settlements of the Julianehaab district—Eskimo, mixed Danish—are ahead there," the host pointed. "The trading ship seems to be making for them too." The Danish vessel was a little ahead. "The Eskimos have seen us from shore, of course. Here come the kayaks!"

Rising and falling with the sweep of the easy shore swell a line of tiny forms appeared within the green water. They dashed nearer and showed themselves to be long, sharp-pointed skin boats, only as wide as the waist of the boatman and driven swiftly by two-bladed paddles, plunged into the sea first to right and