“Gee, you got it bad, didn’t you,” Sandy sympathized. “But, say, when you see that big narwhal laid out on the shore, you’ll think it was worth it. It was sure game of you to hang on to that fellow when you could as easily as not cut loose your line.” Dick smiled bravely through his burning pains. “I don’t know as I deserve all that flattery, Sandy. When that whale started to dive, I’d have slashed the rope if I could have located it. But the water blinded me.”
The following day Dick’s face was well enough for him to go out into the outside air, so long as he kept bundled up to his eyes. He walked down to the beach with Sandy where the narwhal had been towed in.
Though not nearly so large as the common species of whale inhabiting the seas further south, the narwhal was fully sixteen feet long, not including the six-foot tusk of twisted ivory that extended from his blunt nose, and must have weighed several thousand pounds. The Eskimos had already begun to cut up the enormous masses of blubber and to extract the whalebone from the jaws. Dick procured a small piece of the bone as a keep-sake, though for the present his frosted nose was enough to keep the episode in his memory for several weeks to come.
Dick felt that his face was in no condition for him to stay out long that day, and so after the mid-day meal Sandy ventured out alone with his rifle to see if he could not knock down a few eider ducks and gather more of their eggs.
Sandy wandered along the sea shore in the direction of the cairn they had erected near the meteorite. He shot two eider ducks and located a dozen fresh eggs in the nests, which he collected in a leather bag. This done, he walked down to the shore ice and sat down upon a lump, his feet hanging over the lapping water.
He had sat there idly gazing to sea for about five minutes when he noticed a queer object bobbing about in the water about twenty feet from shore. It was dark and round, attracting Sandy’s curiosity immediately. After considerable maneuvering he managed to fish it out with the muzzle of his rifle.
What Sandy picked up in his hands was a large canteen or thermos bottle, used on expeditions in the polar regions. It was covered with sodden leather and evidently had been afloat for a long period of time.
Slowly turning the bottle over in his hands, Sandy found carved in the leather this inscription:
“Look Inside
C. T.
R.N.W.M.P.”
An ejaculation of amazement and of triumph burst from Sandy’s lips, and forgetting all about his ducks and eggs, he set out at a run for the camp, the canteen hugged tightly under one arm.