“And where the devil did you drop in from?” I demanded, helping him off with his stiff parka.
“Down there,” he answered, jerking an elbow toward the south. “Let’s have something to eat, MacNeal. I’m hungry as hell. Look at the pack, will you!”
I had already looked at the pack he had cast off his shoulders to the fur-covered floor of the igloo. It was as lean as a starved hound. I heated a can of beef bouillon and some beans, and made a pot of coffee over the blubber-fat fire that served for both heat and light, and put these and some crackers before my guest. He tore into his meal wolfishly.
“Now a pipe and some tobac, MacNeal,” he ordered, pushing the empty dishes aside.
I gave him one of my pipes and my tobacco-pouch. He filled and lighted up. He seemed to relish the smoke; I imagined he hadn’t had one for some time. He sat silent for a while staring into the flickering flame.
“Say, MacNeal,” he spoke at length; “what do you know about a theory that says once on a time this old world of ours revolved on its axis in a different plane? I’ve heard it said the earth tipped up about seventy degrees. What d’you know about it?”
That was a queer thing for Chris Bonner to ask. He was simon-pure prospector and I had never known him to get far away from the subject of mining and prospecting. He had been hunting gold from Panama to the Arctic Circle for the past thirty years.
“No more than you do, probably,” I answered his question. “I’ve heard of that theory, too. I’d say it is any man’s guess.”
“This theory holds that the North Pole used to be where the Equator is now,” he said. “Do you believe that?”
“I don’t know anything about it, Chris,” I replied. “But I do know that they have found things up this way that are now generally recognized as being peculiarly tropical in nature.”