Romance, adventure, discovery, awaited them.

The big, silent North, mysterious in its age-old desolation, where even the winds seemed to whisper of strange things that had happened countless years before, was just ahead of them.

They were about to bury themselves in its secrets, to wrest from it the yellow treasure it guarded, and their blood tingled and leaped excitedly at the thought.

What would be revealed to them?
What might they not discover?
What strange adventures were they destined to encounter in that Unknown World, peopled only by the things of the wild, that stretched trackless and unexplored before them?
A hundred thoughts like these fired the brains of the three adventurers, and made their work a play, and every breath they drew one of joy.
The lake was alive with ducks.

Huge flocks of big black ducks, mallards, blue bills and whistlers rose about them, and now and then, when an unusually large flock was seen floating upon the water ahead of them, one of the three would take a pot-shot with his rifle.