"Better do the killing with a handspike," advised Sandy, "for we haven't any ammunition to throw away. Besides," the boy went on, "I don't believe a thirty-eight would kill one of these wild animals, anyway!"
"Up on the Yukon," George Benton interrupted, "when they sentence a man to death, they don't hang him. They send him down the river in an open canoe, and give the mosquitos a crack at him!"
"You stated that in the way of an exaggeration," Will Smith suggested, "but it is the absolute truth, for all that! Men lost among the nigger-heads have been found later on with their bones picked dry."
"What's a nigger-head?" asked Tommy.
"A nigger-head is a bog," was the reply. "When I say a bog, I don't mean a swampy hole, either. I mean a grassy knoll sticking up out of a swamp full of mud. If you keep on the bogs, or nigger-heads, you are reasonably safe, but if you drop down into the mud, you are likely to go in over your head."
"How far down does this mud go?" demanded Sandy.
"Down to the ice," replied Will. "This entire country," he went on, "is lined with ice! Ten or twelve feet below the foundation of this cabin, the ice is almost as hard as steel. Sometimes the earth-crust over the ice is a foot thick, and sometimes it is ten feet."
"Are those brilliant flowers growing over a glacier?" asked Tommy, pointing to a group of violets growing not far away.
"Sure!" replied Will. "If it wasn't for the ice, there wouldn't be any violets here. The glacier supplies water as well as soil."
"What'd you say about going up to the end of the moraine?" asked Sandy, joining Tommy at the screened door of the cabin.