The seaman fumbled in his pocket, and taking out a slip of wood handed it to his companion.
"That's what I came to bring you," he said quietly.
Wyllard's eyes grew very grave as he gazed at the thing. It was a slip of willow which will grow close up to the limits of the eternal ice, and it bore a rude representation of the British ensign union down, which signifies "In distress." Besides this there were one or two indecipherable words scratched on it, and three common names rather more clearly cut. Wyllard recognised every one of them.
"How did you get it?" he asked, in tense suspense.
The sailorman once more felt in his pocket and took out a piece of paper cut from a chart. He flattened it out on the table, and it showed, as Wyllard had expected, a strip of the Kamtchatkan coast.
"I guess I needn't tell you where that is," he said, and pointed to the parallel of latitude that ran across it. "Dunton gave it me. He was up there late last season well over on the western side. A north-easterly gale fell on them, and took most of the foremast out of her. I understand they tried to lash on a boom or something as a jury mast, but it hadn't height enough to set much forward canvas, and that being the case she wouldn't bear more than a three-reefed mainsail. Anyway, they couldn't do anything with her on the wind, and as it kept heading them from the east she sidled away down south through the Kuriles into the Yellow Sea. They got ice-bound somewhere, which explains why Dunton only fetched Vancouver a week ago."
"'I guess I needn't tell you where that is,' he said, and pointed to the parallel of latitude that ran across."
"But the message?"