“Right now it looks the same as Greek to me,” Dick admitted, frowning over the wandering lines, crosses and data. “Let’s read the script and see if that will help.”
The following is what the boys read from the strange manuscript:
“If Fate is kind and this bottle and message fall into friendly hands, I desire the nearest post of the R.N.W. M.P. be notified that the undersigned is now being unlawfully held a prisoner on a glacial island several miles off the northern coast of Grant Land, about half way between Cape Columbia and Cape Richards.
“Detailed to apprehend a half-breed Eskimo murderer, I picked up his trail on the barrens and followed him to this island where a band of outlaws, led by Mistak, surprised and captured me.
“I calculate I have been imprisoned about six months in an ice-sealed pit at the bottom of a glacier, which seems to have been formed by an eruption ages ago. The pit has an outlet above my head into one of the large fissures in the top strata of the glacier, which I have tried to locate by means of the accompanying map. One side of the pit is formed of ice many feet thick. By weeks of work I cut my way through this into a series of grottoes or caverns lined with crystallized ice. However, I have so far been unable to find any outlet to the surface of the glacier and the caverns are so cold that I cannot spend much time in them.
“The pit is warmer due to what I believe to be hot springs miles beneath me. A small underground stream of tepid, fresh water, tasting slightly of sulphur, runs across the floor of the pit, out of one wall into another, and upon this I shall set this canteen afloat, hoping by some miracle of good fortune that it will reach the sea and there be discovered.
“Mistak furnishes me every so often with a supply of seal blubber which he drops down from the top of the pit. I do not know why he keeps me alive, except out of fiendish desire to see me suffer.
“Anyone attempting to locate me may do so in two ways—by means of the fissure into which this pit opens, or from the crystal grottoes. Since I have been unable to find an outlet to the grottoes, that method of reaching the pit seems impractical, and I have directed all my efforts on this map toward guiding a rescuing party to the fissure.
“Provided Mistak does not neglect bringing me food for too long a period, I shall be alive when this is read, though I notice some symptoms of scurvy.
“I now set this canteen adrift with its message, trusting in Providence to guide it into the hands of those who will understand the suffering and peril of my plight, and act accordingly. “Corporal James E. Thalman, “R.N.W.M.P. “August 15 (?) 1925.”
Dick and Sandy finished reading the message at about the same time, yet they did not draw from it quite the same conclusions.
“Then I found the canteen after it had been floating and drifting for nearly two months,” Sandy spoke, still awed by the importance of his discovery.
“Yes, as Corporal Thalman hoped, his message found its way to the sea from some underground stream,” Dick rejoined.
Upon re-examining the map they satisfied themselves that the glacial island drawn there was the one they were now camping upon. They traced the trail by which they had come along the east side of the ridge, and rejoiced to find that the meteor stone indicated by the cross must be identical with the one they had found. Estimating on a basis of the scale of miles drawn by Corporal Thalman, they found they were encamped not more than five miles from the point at which the Corporal had been captured eight months before, and hardly thirty miles, allowing for detours, from the actual prison pit.
“Oh, boy! This is more thrilling than looking for lost mines!” Sandy cried exuberantly.
“It’s even more risky,” Dick returned, “and in this case it’s just as difficult. There must be a lot of inaccuracies in this map. The location here may be pretty near ten miles off. I wish the policemen were here to help. This is really too big a job for us.”
“Wouldn’t it be a feather in our caps if we found Corporal Thalman all by ourselves!” Sandy puffed out his chest.