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Rh boats I've got half a continent to cover before I can get at her."

"Sure. And you likely haven't got her then."

Dick's laugh was curt. The fight in him was strongly roused by now, and he had small mercy left for Grange's Andree.

"A chap wrote su'thin' about 'There's never a law of God or man runs north of Fifty-three,’" said Baxter. "I guess we have got 'em both up here at Sixty-nine. An' if anyone's wantin' them at Eighty, which is the Pole itself, ain't it, why—we'll bring 'em there right away. I reckon our jurisdiction runs that high anyhow. A feller can't get on the far side of British law in these parts."

Baxter's patrol reached some two hundred and fifty miles south, and as many hundreds east as he could go. Alaskan territory touched it on the west; but he had no. objection to including all the northern latitude there was. Dick smiled. This unemotional sanguine temperament was exactly the stuff needed for Herschel.

"What have you done with yourself these two years, Baxter?" he asked.

"Why—I reckon they ain't been so long as I thought. They are the patrols up to Macpherson and around to Kittigazuit, and I went a cruise on the 'Janet' last year, after whales. Saw a lot o' country and Esquimaux that were new, and got a lot o' new localities fixed in my head. I've been mapping them out in case they're ever wanted. We were over a hundred miles north of the magnetic pole that time, and I tell you right here that the discipline a good master can keep on a whaler isn't far short o' that on a man-o'-war. Then there's the shootin' in spring. Brayne and I had a solid week this year, and I guess we could have got thousands o' duck an' crane an' geese if we'd wanted. There's all the wood to haul from the mainland, for we can't get enough coal in by steamer. An' there are the customs to collect from the whalers, an' rows to kick up if they're caught givin' drink to the natives, or doin' any else that they shouldn't. An' once in a while we have a prisoner, though the Esquimaux don't give much trouble. There was the whaleboat I bought from off the Karnac last year, too. We stove her in on a rock, an' she took a lot