A second messenger came up and saluted.
"Sir, Lieutenant Davis reports that the plane has been recovered and Lieutenant Curtiss' body examined. There are no bullet marks, and the body seemed to be frozen solidly. He cannot say, as yet, what caused Lieutenant Curtiss' death."
"Frozen," said Teddy laconically.
"In mid-air?" asked the commandant sharply. "And in a fraction of a second, wearing heavy aviator's clothing?"
Teddy nodded, and buttoned up the huge fur coat in which he was enveloped.
"I'm ready to start off now, if the sledges are."
The little party moved away from the shore. The heavy mist still hung over the expanse of ice, but near the shore the ice was thinner. The sledges were roped together, and Teddy walked at the head. The party tugged at the ropes on the sledges, puffing out clouds of frosty breath at every exhalation. Teddy had taken the compass bearings of the steam plume, and after he had gone a hundred yards from the shore the wisdom of his course became apparent. They were completely surrounded by a thick fog in which objects five yards off were lost to view. Teddy, leading the small column, could not be seen except as a dim and shadowy figure by the men hardly more than two paces in his rear. He referred constantly to his compass, and once or twice glanced at the thermometer he had strapped on the sleeve of his great coat.
"Forty degrees," he murmured to himself. "And in New York it's eighty-four in the shade. The ice must be colder still because it's dry and hard."
The party toiled on. Presently small snow crystals crunched underfoot.
"Frozen mist," said Teddy, and glanced at his thermometer. "H'm! Twenty-two degrees. Ten below freezing."