Yet they knew nothing of this, and slept serene in the hope of soon rejoining their comrades. They woke to find the sun already up, and the Eskimo gone. His tracks lay through the snow inland. While they wondered if he had abandoned them he reappeared, bearing a scant handful of willow brush which he had dug out of the snow in the valley beyond. With this they managed to roast some strips of seal meat and make a satisfactory breakfast. The wind had ceased, the air was keen but bracing, and they did not mind the cold, which, after all, was not great. The first warning of the terrible winter was on them, but it was not yet severe. Their young blood leaped in the keen air, and they felt a relief from danger that made them fairly frolicsome. The ship could not be far away, they were sure, and they would find it and all would be well.
“There is one comfort about this way of living,” said Harry philosophically; “you don’t have any dishes to clean up.”
“No,” replied Joe; “nor much to put in them, either.”
Then both boys noted the Eskimo’s manner. He stood looking toward the north with a strange intensity. Over in that direction the snowy fields of the pack ice stretched away to the limitless haze of the horizon. In the distance these ice-fields seemed to quiver as the air quivers in summer when the heat is intense. They trembled and wavered, and changed from ice-fields to open sea that shone fair under the morning sun. This sea was calm and free from ice, and seemed to move eastward, melting the ice and snow before it as it went. They turned to watch this eastward movement, and after a little a headland appeared in it, and both boys gave a cry of delight.
“The ship! the ship!” they cried, and danced and swung their hats and hurrahed. There she was at anchor by the headland, safe and sound as they had left her, and their hearts glowed within them at the thought of home coming.
“There she is!” cried Joe exultantly, “right north by Icy Cape! I remember the headland there. Good Lord! What’s she doing?”
The Bowhead moved out from her anchorage on this quivering open sea with never a sail set, and no smoke from her engines, and lifting up and up seemed to climb the horizon to the northeast and disappear, a speck in the high heavens; and as she did so the shimmering waters vanished, leaving only the rough, snow-clad ice-fields, bleak and impenetrable.
Joe and Harry looked at each other. It was mirage, they knew that, yet there had been the headland, and the ship, her every spar and rope familiar to them. It was magic; that was what the Eskimo said, but he was quite confident that it was bad magic, and that this was to show them that ship and crew were lost, —had sailed far away to the unknown, never to return. He would go to Icy Cape with them if they wished, but they would find only winter ghosts there.
Nevertheless it was their only clue, and they decided to go. With their friends camped only a few short miles to the southwest, they headed in the opposite direction and began struggling through the mush ice, across floes, making a toilsome but sure progress to the northeast. At noon they camped on a floe, ate seal meat, and, after a brief rest, toiled on. At night they camped as before. Thus for two days they steadily worked up the coast. At nightfall of the second the wind came in again from the west, with squalls of snow and a recurrence of severe cold, but the next day they went on still, and by noon were rounding the headland. The air was thick with snow, but in a lull they sighted what seemed to be the ship, and cries of thanksgiving went up from the weary wayfarers.
“The ship! the ship!” they cried once more, confident that this could be no mirage. The Eskimo shook his head.