"Whatever it is," said Phil, "we've got to cross it, and I am going to head straight for that opening."
So they again bent to their traces, and a few hours later had crossed the great white plain, and were skirting the base of a mountain that rose on their left. Its splintered crags showed the dull red of iron rust wherever they were bare of snow, and only thin fringes of snow were to be seen in its more sheltered gorges.
Suddenly Phil halted, his face paled, and his lips quivered with emotion. "The sea!" he gasped. "Over there, Serge!"
Jalap Coombs caught the words, and was on his feet in an instant, all his pain forgotten in a desire to once more catch a glimpse of his beloved salt water.
"Yes," replied Serge, after a long look. "It certainly is a narrow bay. How I wish we knew what one! But, Phil! what is that, down there near the foot of the cliffs? Is it—can it be—a house?"
"Where?" cried Phil. "Yes, I see! I do believe it is! Yes, it certainly is a house."
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE MOST FAMOUS ALASKAN GLACIER.
That little house nestling at the base of a precipitous mountain, and still nearly a mile away, was just then a more fascinating sight to our half-starved, toil-worn travellers than even the sea itself, and filled with a hopeful excitement they hastened toward it. It was probably a salmon cannery or saltery, or a trading-post. At any rate the one house they had discovered was that of a white man; for it had a chimney, and none of the Tlingits or natives of southern Alaska build chimneys.
While Phil and Jalap Coombs were full of confidence that a few minutes more would find them in a settlement of white men, Serge was greatly puzzled, and, though he said little, kept up a deal of thinking as he tugged at the rawhide sledge-trace. He felt that he ought to know the place, for he did not believe they were one hundred miles from Sitka; but he could not remember having heard of any white settlement on that part of the coast, except at the Chilkat cannery, and this place did not correspond in any particular with what he had heard of that.