“No, no, master,” he protested volubly, “Yakuts build only small fires, never big fires like this.”
“Well, Nindemann,” I said, “I think we’re on the trail at last. This looks to me like a signal fire, especially since it’s built on this promontory to shine out over the bay. De Long must have passed here.”
“Yah,” agreed the quartermaster, “that is right. There! See? There is the old wreck of a flatboat on the bank and I remember Louis and me passed by that wreck the same day we left the captain! This is the way we came, and the captain said he’d follow our trail!”
Going down to the river again, we climbed aboard our dog sledges. Nindemann on his sledge led along the ice, and with me following on mine, we set off on a short journey up the stream to examine the bare skeleton of that flatboat, stranded on the bank a quarter of a mile downstream.
I rode, sitting sideways on my sledge, facing the high bank which rose some thirty feet above the river, and which, as usual, had hard-driven snow packed in a glistening slope from its crest down over the frozen river. Going swiftly along over the ice this way while eagerly scanning the river bank, I noted standing up through the sloping snow what seemed to be the points of four sticks lashed together with a rope.
Immediately I rolled off the speeding sledge, and swiftly going to the spot, found a Remington rifle slung from the sticks, its muzzle some eight inches out of the snow. A real sign of De Long at last!
Instantly I sent my driver to bring Nindemann back, feeling that here the weakening wanderers might have made a cache of such belongings as they could no longer carry, and perhaps even have left a record of their progress. We were certainly on the trail now!
While the Yakuts at my orders began digging in the snow around those sticks, Nindemann returned to the flatboat, and I with a compass again climbed up the steep river bank, intending to get some bearings from which later I might find that spot in case a sudden snow-storm should blot out the way to it.
Panting from my exertions, I looked about for a good place on that high ground from which to take the compass bearings when a few steps off, partially buried in the snow still left on that forlorn and gale-swept height, I saw a copper tea kettle. With a beating heart, I started for it, then stopped short. There before me on that desolate plateau, protruding stiff and stark above the snow—was an extended arm!
