CHAPTER XIV
THE FLOATING MANUSCRIPT
When Sandy burst into the igloo with his precious find clutched to his breast he found Dick asleep. He shook his chum out of the sleeping bag in a hurry.
“What’s all the excitement about?” Dick mumbled rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
“Something from Corporal Thalman,” Sandy cried, thrusting the canteen under Dick’s eyes.
Dick started forward as he read the words carved in the leather, and uttered a cry of astonishment.
“Where’s an axe? Let’s break the bottle open and see what’s inside! Won’t Corporal McCarthy open his eyes when he sees this!” Dick was even more excited than Sandy.
A moment later they had split the bottle as carefully as they could and from the inside extracted a tightly rolled strip of leather, about the width of an ordinary sheet of writing paper.
The leather apparently had been cut from an old shirt. Unrolled, it presented a mass of words and a crude map, carved in the leather by something in the nature of a sharp stone.
“It’s a message from Corporal Thalman!” exclaimed Dick, deciphering the initials, “C. T.” and the abbreviation for “Royal Northwest Mounted Police.”
“And that map shows where he is!” Sandy cried.