Roy J. Snell

“ He laughed and chatted gaily over his sour-dough pancakes.
"Now you know," he said, as he shoved back his stool, "I like your company awfully well, and I'd like to keep this up indefinitely; but I've got to get across the straits."
"We'll be sorry to lose you," laughed Marion; "but just you run along. And when you get there, tell the missionary that breakfast is ready. Ask him to step over and eat with us."
"No, but I'm serious."
"Then you're crazy. No white man has ever crossed thirty-five miles of floeing ice."
"There's always to be a first. Natives do it, don't they?" ”

“ Then again she gazed away toward the cabin.
"Why!" she exclaimed suddenly, "he has reached the cabin! He must have run every step of the way!"
In the cabin on shore, the young stranger began packing the girls' possessions preparatory to putting them on the sled.
"Some careless housekeepers!" he grumbled, as he gathered up articles of clothing from every corner of the room, and, having straightened out Marion's paint-box, closed its cover down with a click.
He arrived at the schooner an hour later. The sled load was soon stowed away in the wireless cabin. ”

“ His skin-boots had been made by some Eskimo woman of no mean ability, who had fitted them to his feet, as she would have done for her Eskimo husband.
"Oh, well!" she exclaimed, as she raced to join her companions, "probably some native who has passed this way."
Even as she said it, she doubted her own judgment. She had never in her life seen a native wear such a clumsily shaped skin-boot. ”