“You bet he is!” exclaimed Bobby, warmly. “I only wish we had some way to pay him for all he is doing for us.”
“Oh, we’ll pay him all right,” cried Billy exuberantly. “When we get the treasure we’ll divide up fifty-fifty.”
“Say, not so loud, not so loud,” cried Fred, scornfully. “What’s the matter with you, you old stewed prune? Do you want to give our secret away?”
“Oh, say! I forgot,” cried Billy penitently. “Honest I did, fellows. I wonder if anybody heard it.”
“We’ll hope not,” said Bobby, adding, as he pulled on the caribou pants: “But seriously, fellows, we’d better be pretty careful what we say. If we can once get what we’re after, we can be generous. But until then, the least said, soonest mended.”
And when, attired in fur from head to foot, the boys stepped out into the bitter world of ice and snow that surrounded the igloo, they realized how true had been Kapje’s statement that fur was the only sensible or practical clothing for a climate where the thermometer often fell to sixty degrees below zero.
The cold, which would have found its way irresistibly through porous woolen clothing, no matter how heavy it might be, attacked in vain their impenetrable suits of fur.
It was a glorious feeling. To know, by the way your nose felt and by your watering eyes how bitterly cold it was and yet not to suffer any actual discomfort.
They felt as though that grim North which had swallowed up so many adventurous travelers from warmer places had suddenly turned friendly to them. They loved even the snow that fell thickly and heavily, powdering them in no time with a thick covering of white.
“We look like Santa Claus,” chuckled Bobby. “No wonder the dear old boy is supposed to make his home up this way. I feel as if we ought to come across him any minute with his reindeer and sleigh.”