"Well," he said, with a gesture of resignation, "I'll send the thing on. If Miss Creighton will excuse me, I'll tell your man to get out my waggon."
Then he went out, and Sally turned to Hawtrey with the colour in her cheeks and a flash in her eyes.
"It's Harry Wyllard's money," she said.
CHAPTER XXVII.
IN THE WILDERNESS.
A bitter wind was blowing when Wyllard stood outside the little tent the morning after he had made a landing on the ice, watching the grey daylight break amidst a haze of sliding snow. He was to leeward of the straining canvas which partly sheltered him, but the raw cold struck through him to the bone, and he was stiff and sore from his exertions during the previous day. Most of his joints ached unpleasantly, and his clothing had not quite dried upon him with the warmth of his body. He was also conscious of a strong desire to crawl back into the tent and go to sleep again, but that was one it would clearly not be wise to indulge in, since they were, he fancied, still some distance off the beach, and the ice might commence to break up at any moment. It stretched away before him, seamed by fissures and serrated ridges here and there, for a few hundred yards, and then was lost in the sliding snow, and as he gazed at it all his physical nature shrank from the prospect of the journey through the frozen desolation.
Then with a little shiver he crawled back into the tent where his two companions were crouching beside the cooking lamp. The feeble light of its sputtering blue flame touched their faces which were graver than usual, but Charly turned and looked up as he came in.
"Wind's dropping," said Wyllard curtly. "We'll start as soon as you have made breakfast. We must try to reach the beach to-night."
Charly made no answer, though the dusky-skinned Siwash grunted, and in a few more minutes they silently commenced their meal. It was promptly finished, and they struck the tent, and packed it with their sleeping bags and provisions upon the sled, and then, taking up the traces, set out across the ice. The light had grown a little clearer now, and the snow was thinning, but it still whirled about them, and lay piled in drawn-out wreaths to lee of every hummock or ragged ridge. They floundered through them knee-deep, and in the softer places the weight upon the traces grew unpleasantly heavy. That, however, was not a thing any of them felt the least desire to complain of, and it was indeed a matter of regret to them that they were not harnessed to a heavier burden. There was a snow-wrapped desolation in front of them, and they had lost a number of small comforts and part of their provisions in making a landing. Whether the latter could by any means be replaced they did not know, and in the meanwhile it certainly did not seem very probable.