“Do they know we are going to try for the Pole?”
“Not exactly, but I’ve told them—and so has the captain—that we intended to stay in the polar regions for at least two years.”
Winter had passed, and now it was the middle of Spring. The weather was warm and pleasant, just the sort for a cruise, as Andy declared.
The boys had had but little to bother them outside of another meeting Andy had with his Uncle Si, who had followed him to Rathley. Josiah Graham had tried to “bulldoze” the youth, and had wanted Andy to give him ten dollars, but the boy had refused, and walked away, leaving his uncle in a more bitter frame of mind than ever.
“I don’t know how he manages to live,” Andy told Chet. “He doesn’t seem to work.”
“If he isn’t willing to work, he ought to starve,” answered Chet. He had no tender feelings for the man who had called him the son of a thief.
“I am sorry he came to Rathley. I don’t understand how he found out we were here.”
“Oh, he’d take more trouble to find you than to hunt up a job,” answered Chet.
On the day previous to that set for the Ice King to sail, Chet was walking down one of the docks, when he saw two men in earnest conversation. One man was pointing his long forefinger toward the vessel that was bound north, and drawing closer, Chet recognized Josiah Graham.
“Now what can he be up to?” the youth asked himself. “He seems to be quite excited.”