“Bring it along,” Marian said, handing the piece back to Attatak. “It tells us one thing—that the man who built that fire was an Eskimo. It is worth keeping. I should like to take it with me to the Museum when I go back.
“Now,” she said briskly, “let’s go all over the cave. There may be things that we have not yet discovered.”
And indeed there were. It was with the delicious sensation of research and adventure that the girls wandered back and forth from wall to wall of the gloomy cavern.
Not until they had passed the spot where they had spent the night, and were far back in the cave, did they make a discovery of any importance. Then it was that Marian, with a little cry of joy, put out her hand and took from a ledge of rock a strange looking little dish no larger than a finger bowl. It was so incrusted with dirt and dust that she could not tell whether it was really a rare find of some ancient pottery, or an ordinary china dish left here by some white adventurer. However, something within her seemed to whisper: “Here is wealth untold; here is a prize that will cause your friend, the museum curator, to turn green with envy.”
“_Sulee!_” (another), said Attatak, as she took down a larger object of the same general shape.
A few feet farther on was a ledge fairly covered with curious objects; strange shaped dishes; bits of ivory, black as coal; pieces of copper, dulled with age. Such were the treasures of the past that lay before them.
“Someone’s pantry of long ago,” mused Marian.
“Very, very old,” said Attatak, holding up a bit of black ivory. “Mebby two hundred, mebby five hundred years. Ivory turn black slow; very, very slow. By and by, after long, long time, look like that.”
As Attatak uttered these words Marian could have hugged her for sheer joy. She knew now that they had made a very rare find. The objects had not been left there by a white man, but by some native. Broken bits of ancient Eskimo pottery had been found in mounds on the Arctic coast. Those had been treasured. But here were perfect specimens, such as any museum in the world would covet.
And yet, had she but known it, the rareness and value of some of these were to exceed her fondest dreams. But this discovery was to come later.