Ned and the operator were now beside him. They knelt on the ice and likewise peered down into the blue-white depths of the sink. Ned uttered a shout of amazement.
“What do you know about this!” murmured Kingston.
Under an out-thrust shelf of ice and on the bottom of the hole a small fire was smouldering. Two muffled figures lay beside this tiny fire. But they moved, first one and then the other raising his head and then waving a feeble hand to the spectators on the brink of the ice wall.
“The lost seamen?” demanded New Newton of Mr. Damon.
“Karofsen’s brother and nephew,” the gentleman answered. “I don’t care about the lost gold! The men are still alive! They must have suffered terribly. And how they found fuel for even that little fire, I don’t see.”
The eager schooner captain just then arrived with the pair of seamen he had called. They had a coil of rope long enough to reach to the bottom of the cleft in the ice.
It was plain that the men below could not help themselves. Kingston, who was the lightest of the party, volunteered to go down.
“Take the pag vonce,” said Karofsen eagerly. “I pet you it vill come handy—yes? Now, are you ready?”
The operator swung out from the ice, and fending himself from the wall with feet and hands, was lowered safely to the floor of the sink. As soon as he stood upon his feet there he disengaged himself from the loop of the rope and ran across to the two men.
They tried to struggle up, but both dropped back. They were weak from lack of nourishment and their extremities were undoubtedly frost-bitten. The older man insisted by gestures (he could speak but few English words) that Kingston aid his son, first of all.