“To protect a cache.”
“What is that, Jack?”
“It’s a hiding-place for food or the like. For instance, the men who were here, probably castaways like ourselves, abandoned their hut to seek some native settlement or find a ship. They could not carry all their stores, and wanted to secure them from animals, so they buried them in the snow, piled the ice over it, and then put up this board as a marking signal of the spot. Should they return, it would be a supply station for them.”
“I understand, Jack; and you think we shall find something under those blocks of ice?”
“Undoubtedly, lad.”
“Let us go to work, then.”
“All right,” and Jack and his companion united their strength to remove the solid ice blocks.
They found it no easy task, and when they were displaced came to a foundation of solidly packed snow.
The hatchet was used to loosen this. Some feet below the surface they found a package encased in the hard, dried skin of some animal and tied securely with pieces of rope.
There were a dozen or more of these packages of various sizes, and at the bottom of the cache several large planks of wood laid there to protect the packages in case of a thaw, when the mass would sink uniformly and not become scattered.