Lucile sank weakly into a chair. Marian began pacing the floor.
"Anyway," she exclaimed at last, "I can paint it. It will make a wonderful study."
Suiting action to words, she sought out her paint-box and was soon busy with a sketch, which, developing bit by bit, or rather, seeming to evolve out of nothing, showed a native dressed in furs, shading his eyes to scan the dark, tossing ocean. And beyond, the object of his gaze, was the silvery line. When she had finished, she playfully inscribed a title at the bottom:
"The Coming of the White Line."
As she put her paints away, something caught her eye. It was one corner of the blue envelope with the strange address upon it.
"Ah, there you are still," she sighed. "And there you will remain for nine months unless I miss my guess. I wish I hadn't kept my promise to the college boy; wish I'd left you in the pigeon-hole at Cape Prince of Wales."
Since the air was too chill, the wind too keen for travel, the girls slept that night in the cabin. They awoke to a new world. The first glimpse outside the cabin brought surprised exclamations to their lips. In a single night the world appeared to have been transformed. The "white line" was gone. So, too, was the ocean. Before them, as far as the eye could reach, lay a mass of yellow lights and purple shadows, ice-fields that had buried the sea. Only one object stood out, black, bleak and bare before them—the hull of the wrecked and abandoned ship.
"Look!" said Lucile suddenly, "we can go out to the ship over the ice-floe!"
"Let's do it," said Marian enthusiastically. "Perhaps there's some sort of a solution to our problem there."
They were soon threading their way in and out among the ice-piles which were already solidly attaching themselves to the sand beneath the shallow water.