Page:Hugh Pendexter--Tiberius Smith.djvu/54

 coast strip, you know, is free from permanent ice and snow and varies from one hundred to sixty miles in width. The Eskimos live on this ribbon of lowland and avoid the interior, where the iceman could quarry from two thousand feet to a mile before reaching real soil. That's what I call ice.

"The travel was pleasant and exhilarating, and Tib was all enthusiasm. 'If I can pinch a bevy of these sightly wags I shall form them into a brass-band, my child. Only think of the effect down in Utica!' he remarked one night when we were near the interior limit of the coast strip and were lying in our tent, smoking.

"Our henchmen were a mild-mannered people, entirely unfit for railroad work because of their penchant to absorb all the fat and oil in sight. And they were abominably given to song. They kept us awake two hours, chanting sagas, all in one key. At last they let up, and we sank to rest as softly as two babes in the woods.

"The next thing I knew Tib was digging his honest knuckles into my sides and murmuring: 'And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak; and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers.'

"I awoke to behold the sun—and then about a score of the biggest men I ever saw. I thought at first I must be romancing in some spectacular