Lucile worked her way about the ice-pile to a point where she could see through a crack between cakes, then she motioned Marian to join her. Together they watched the antics of the clumsy white bear.
"My! Isn't it huge!" whispered Marian.
For a time the bear amused himself by knocking rusty ten-gallon gasoline cans about. At last, seeming to scent something, he began tearing up a particular garbage pile. Presently a huge rat ran out and went scurrying away. There followed a lively chase which ended in a prolonged squeal.
"He got him!" Marian shivered.
The bear had moved out of their view. Cautiously, they turned and made their way from ice-pile to ice-pile, from the rubbish heap toward camp.
"I hope he doesn't get our scent and follow us," said Lucile. "They don't usually bother people much, though."
In spite of her belief that the bear would not harm them, Lucile did not sleep well that night. "You can never tell what a hungry bear might do," she kept saying over and over to herself.
At last, late in the night, she fell asleep and slept soundly until morning. When finally she did awake, it was with the feeling that somehow something had changed.
"Land! Land!" something seemed to be whispering to her. It could have been nothing short of intuition which gave her this suggestion. They had been riding on the surface of a gigantic ice-floe. It was, perhaps, twenty miles wide by a hundred long. There was no sense of motion. So silent was its sweep, one might imagine oneself to be upon land; yet, as she crept quickly out of her sleeping-bag, she saw at once that the motion of the floe was arrested and off to the right she read the reason. A narrow stretch of rocky shore there cast back the first rays of the morning sun.
"Marian! Marian!" she called excitedly. "Land! Land! An island!"