The Mena weekly star., 1911-04-20

1 "inS uoWn the ice chim-
 ney' Had she known how long if real.
 " was, she would have been iustifed ln feeling seriously worried about .tm
 put not knowing, she attributed tha seeming duration of his delav to tba tedium of sitting In the dark with nothing to do. Even at that she was conscious of feeling of relief when she heard him call out to her once more, cheerfully, albeit somewhat noiiowly, from the chimneys mouth. Jeanne, where are you?"
 Here, just where you left me"
 Here! All the while! You must De half frozen. I've been gone the better part of an hour"
 I didn't know how long it was. and l kept thinking you'd be back any minute. But where in the world have you been?"
 By the time she asked that question they had groped ther way back into the storeroom and thence into the liv- Ing room of the hut, and by now she was looking at him in the full light of day.
 He dropped down, with a rather ex- plosive sigh, upon one of the hunks, and poked tentatively at his thighs and shoulders as if they were numb with fatigue.
 T think by a reasonable estimate" he said, that chimney Is five miles high. l kept going and going and go- Ing. till began to believe that there wasn't any end to it; or that, by some magic or other, I slipped down a yard as often as I went up one. But l did get to the end at last and I'll give you a thousand guesses as to what I found there'
 The observatory" she hazarded. "Ohl but not really? I did not mean that for an honest guess at all It was just the first thing that came into my head But how could they pull the pilot house of the Phoenix up through that little hole in the ice?"
 Well, to tell the truth, don't be- lieve they did" he answered with mocking seriousness. "Tt's more like ly that they took 1t to pieces, and then rigged a boom and tackle up at the cliff-head and hauled it up outside. But when they got it up there they put it together again right across the Assure, and them tunnelled down, or up, the whole depth of the cliff. IL must have taken them weeks to do it. and when it was done they had an in- side connection between it and the hut, so that they were quite indepen- dent of the weather. And it must have been a great place to make ob- servations from"
 Have been" she echoed question: ingly. Isn't it now?"
 "No, because it's all showed and frozen in. It's buried. l don't know how many feet deep by this time, and dark, of course, as a pocket. But everything inside is quite undisturbed. doubt if single member of the wal rus crew ever saw it, or even sus- pected that such a place existed"
 He unbuttoned his jacket and took from an inner pocket a scrap of pa per.
 Being a methodical person" he ez- plained. q made an inventory. It's really quite a respectable list
 She seated hersel. beside him on the bunk as if to read the paper.
 q imagine you will need an inter preter." he said. I've half forgotten what these tracks mean myself My hands were so stiff with the cold 1t wasn't very easy to write. But that first word is telescope And then there are the meteorological instru- ments, barometers, thermometers, and so on, and the PhoeRix's compass. sex tant and chronometer, microscope. a parafflne oven and d big chunk of parafine, an oil lamp. fivegallon can about half full of oil, and a small stove. There was providential treas ure for me in the form of razor, which they used, suppose, for cutting microscopic sections with. I'm glad they hadn't microtone to do it prop erly."
 You didn't find comb for me. did your? she asked. Because. unless you did, or until you do. you won't be allowed to use the razor"
 q suppose I could make you one, or A sort of one. It would be genuine ivory, anyway"
 He had come. apparently, to tho end of the list
 Well" she said, T suppose we might find something to do with ai- most any one of those things; some of them will be useful. certainly. And tt's pleasant, somehow. to think of our little pilot house, all showed in' up there on the cliff-head. and of our in- side passage leading up to it
 That's quite true," he said. T sup pose it's all romantic nonsense, but ir does give one a certain feeling of se- security. However he wo"s on. we're not reduced as yet to any thing as intangible as that as sup ject for giving thanks. You maven seen the whole of my list yet I've saved the best till the last"
 He turned the paper over in ms hand as he spoke. She did not attempt to read what he had written, but sat there beside him, her hands clasped about one knee, her eyes upon the booted foot which was poised across the other, and waited rather tenseiy for him to tell her
 .It's not so very much. but 1t VIII mean an immense lot 10 us. what people die of in the arctic is not so often disease or accident, or even ui-