“That’s true,” replied Dick, “but say, this big stone gives me an idea. Let’s gather some big rocks and build a monument here, leaving some kind of record inside of it. That’s the way all the Arctic explorers did. They called them cairns.”
Sandy and Toma quickly showed how enthusiastic they were by starting to gather stones of a good size. These they built up in a solid circle near the meteor until they had an erection about a foot high.
“Now for the record,” said Dick, and drew from his pocket a small calendar with which he had been keeping track of the days. Sandy dug down in the ample pockets of his caribou hide shirt and found a soft-nosed rifle cartridge. With a hunting knife they trimmed this to a point, improvising a crude lead pencil. Then on the back of the card board that had supported the calendar leaves, Dick wrote under the day and year:
“We are on an uncharted island, a few hundred miles west of Greenland, near the Arctic Circle. This is the farthest north we have ever been in the service of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, or the Hudson’s Bay Company. If something happens and we never return, anyone who reads this will know just about where we were when we disappeared.”
Under this, all three of the boys proudly signed their names, Toma painfully inscribing his to the accompaniment of a twisting tongue, which he chewed industriously at every move of the pencil.
When the record was finished Dick folded it carefully and stowed it in the center of the cairn, placing a heavy stone upon it. Then they gathered more stones and built up the cairn to a height of about five feet, rounding it off nicely at the top, forming a receptacle for the record that would stand for years and years.
“It’s about time we were getting back to camp the way my stomach feels,” Dick said when they had finished, and were standing off at a distance appraising their handiwork.
Sandy’s and Toma’s stomachs seemed to agree perfectly with Dick’s and so they started off on the back trail, glancing over their shoulders every now and then at the cairn.
By the time they reached camp their appetites had grown immensely, and they voiced the hope that Sipsa would have something prepared to eat. But there was no smell of hot tea or frying meat. In fact, as they approached they could see no sign whatever of the Eskimo guide.
“He must be in one of the igloos,” Dick hazarded.