Dick felt that his face was in no condition for him to stay out long that day, and so after the mid-day meal Sandy ventured out alone with his rifle to see if he could not knock down a few eider ducks and gather more of their eggs.
Sandy wandered along the sea shore in the direction of the cairn they had erected near the meteorite. He shot two eider ducks and located a dozen fresh eggs in the nests, which he collected in a leather bag. This done, he walked down to the shore ice and sat down upon a lump, his feet hanging over the lapping water.
He had sat there idly gazing to sea for about five minutes when he noticed a queer object bobbing about in the water about twenty feet from shore. It was dark and round, attracting Sandy’s curiosity immediately. After considerable maneuvering he managed to fish it out with the muzzle of his rifle.
What Sandy picked up in his hands was a large canteen or thermos bottle, used on expeditions in the polar regions. It was covered with sodden leather and evidently had been afloat for a long period of time.
Slowly turning the bottle over in his hands, Sandy found carved in the leather this inscription:
An ejaculation of amazement and of triumph burst from Sandy’s lips, and forgetting all about his ducks and eggs, he set out at a run for the camp, the canteen hugged tightly under one arm.
When Sandy burst into the igloo with his precious find clutched to his breast he found Dick asleep. He shook his chum out of the sleeping bag in a hurry.
“What’s all the excitement about?” Dick mumbled rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
“Something from Corporal Thalman,” Sandy cried, thrusting the canteen under Dick’s eyes.
Dick started forward as he read the words carved in the leather, and uttered a cry of astonishment.
“Where’s an axe? Let’s break the bottle open and see what’s inside! Won’t Corporal McCarthy open his eyes when he sees this!” Dick was even more excited than Sandy.
A moment later they had split the bottle as carefully as they could and from the inside extracted a tightly rolled strip of leather, about the width of an ordinary sheet of writing paper.
The leather apparently had been cut from an old shirt. Unrolled, it presented a mass of words and a crude map, carved in the leather by something in the nature of a sharp stone.