run down in the night. So no other living soul had the facts, and
he gave them to me. There is a strange sort of a country 'way up
north beyond the ice, and strange folks living in it. Gaffett
believed it was the next world to this."

"What do you mean, Captain Littlepage?" I exclaimed. The old
man was bending forward and whispering; he looked over his shoulder
before he spoke the last sentence.

"To hear old Gaffett tell about it was something awful," he
said, going on with his story quite steadily after the moment of
excitement had passed. "'Twas first a tale of dogs and sledges,
and cold and wind and snow. Then they begun to find the ice grow
rotten; they had been frozen in, and got into a current flowing
north, far up beyond Fox Channel, and they took to their boats when
the ship got crushed, and this warm current took them out of sight
of the ice, and into a great open sea; and they still followed it
due north, just the very way they had planned to go. Then they
struck a coast that wasn't laid down or charted, but the cliffs
were such that no boat could land until they found a bay and struck
across under sail to the other side where the shore looked lower;
they were scant of provisions and out of water, but they got sight
of something that looked like a great town. 'For God's sake,
Gaffett!' said I, the first time he told me. 'You don't mean a
town two degrees farther north than ships had ever been?' for he'd
got their course marked on an old chart that he'd pieced out at the
top; but he insisted upon it, and told it over and over again, to
be sure I had it straight to carry to those who would be
interested. There was no snow and ice, he said, after they had
sailed some days with that warm current, which seemed to come right