And yet each moment, without apparent reason added to his conviction that Mukoki had made a mistake, and that Minnetaki was on the sledge ahead of him.
The country into which he was penetrating grew wilder.

Rocky ridges rose before him, split by rifts and gullies through which the water must have rushed in torrents in the spring.

He listened, and proceeded more cautiously; and through his mind there flashed a memory of his thrilling exploration of the mysterious chasm of a few weeks before, when, in his lonely night camp, he had dreamed of the skeletons.

He was thinking of this when he came around the end of a huge rock which lay as big as a house in his path.

Upon the snow, almost at his feet, was a sight that froze the blood in his veins.