There was no answer. Again Dick called out, without getting any reply. His face paled a little at the strange silence of the men and summoning all his courage he stepped up and grasped the one sitting against the wall by the shoulder. With a cry of horror he staggered back. The body was immovable as stone to the touch, and from the depths of the parka stared a pair of glassy, sightless eyes.
Dick and Sandy turned and looked at each other, swallowing lumps in their throats, and experiencing unpleasant goose-flesh.
For what they had stumbled upon, in that secluded nook, was a camp of frozen men!
CHAPTER XII
TRAPPED!
At the moment Dick and Sandy discovered themselves in the company of men from whom life had long since fled, they would have gladly chosen to face Mistak and his men rather than remain in the strange, canyon-like pit a second longer. But time and the real peril awaiting them, if they were discovered by Mistak, steadied their nerves.
“It’s silly of us to act like a couple of babies when we see two dead men,” Dick found his tongue again.
“Maybe it is,” Sandy rejoined in a shaky voice, “but it was worse than finding a skeleton in a dark clothes closet.”
Dick silently agreed with Sandy, but thought it better not to admit it aloud. Instead, he assumed a calmness he did not feel in order to disperse Sandy’s fears.
“What we must do now,” said Dick, “is try to find out who these men were. They may have been of some importance in the south—engineers, explorers, or scientists.”
“Go ahead if you want to,” Sandy shook his head as he eyed their gruesome find. “I’ll go back into the cave where I can hear any one that may come in on the other side of the barricade.”