There was but a few yards of open water between them and the barren, snow-piled shore, and the floe on their right made a strong bridge to land. Half a mile out to sea was the umiack of Constable Sloan and Toma, making good time toward land. Corporal McCarthy was waving his paddle to them a quarter mile to the left, and, now that the fog no longer deadened sound, his shout was borne to the ears of the happy boys.
Dick and Sandy immediately bent to the paddles and worked the umiack into the beach, where they pulled it upon dry land and commenced unloading it.
A half hour later the company was reunited, and Corporal McCarthy gave orders to make camp, and to stow the native boats high and dry on the shore for future use.
“We’ll have to take a rest after that hard pull across the bay,” the policeman explained. “But while you fellows fix something to eat, I’ll take a run along the shore and see if I can’t find where Mistak landed. I’d like to know more about this island we’ve landed on, too.”
When Corporal McCarthy was gone, Dick, Sandy and Toma set to work with alacrity to help Constable Sloan make camp. They were so hungry that their mouths watered when they fed the ravenous dogs their allotment of frozen fish.
“I could eat whalebone and like it,” Dick said to Sandy as he watched Constable Sloan pouring beans into the melted snow water, and listened to the simmering of the tea pot.
“That’s nothing,” Sandy retorted. “I know now why a goat can eat tin cans.”
Constable Sloan did not wait for Corporal McCarthy’s return before he called all hands to the food he had prepared. Perhaps he sympathized with the boys, but it was true he ate as hungrily as they did, all the while telling them stories of his experiences in the land of the long day and the long night.
“It hardly seems possible we’re actually seeing the midnight sun,” Dick said, when the edge was off his appetite.
“The way my eyes feel, I sure feel it’s a fact. Do your eyes feel strained and tired, Dick?”