The moon had not risen, but a pale glow shone above a gray peak and the sky was clear.  One could not see much in the hollow, but the snow reflected a faint light.  The timbers they had erected rose like a black skeleton, and after glancing at them, Charnock’s eyes were drawn towards the pile of logs in the pond at the water’s edge.  A log pond is generally made in a river, where the stream will carry the trunks into the containing chains.  But Festing had made his on land, using the snow instead of the current.  Charnock could not tell what had attracted his attention, but stood motionless for a moment or two.

He heard nothing but the roar of the current and the crash of splintering ice, and could hardly distinguish the logs.  Their outline was blurred and the dark-colored mass melted into a dusky background of rock and water.  Yet he thought something had moved beside the pond.

Then an indistinct object detached itself from the pile.  It was shapeless and he lost it next moment, but it had been visible against a patch of snow.  It was not a man’s height, and, so far as he could see, moved like an animal, but no wild beast would haunt the outskirts of a noisy construction camp.  Since he could not imagine why a man should crawl about the logs at night, he resolved to satisfy his curiosity.

This needed caution, and he lay down and rolled himself in the snow.  It stuck to his shaggy skin-coat, and remembering that some drills had been left near the track he felt about until he found one.  The short steel bar was easy to carry and might be useful.  The next thing was to get down without being seen, and he crept to the log-slide and sitting down let himself go.  His coat rolled up and acted like a brake, but he reached and shot over the top of the last pitch.  Next moment he struck the logs at the bottom with a jar that left him breathless, and he lay still to recover.  His coat was white; indeed, the snow had forced its way inside his clothes, but he must be careful about his background and avoid abrupt movements.

Getting on his hands and knees, he crawled along the bottom of the pile.  The logs were not numerous, since some had been used, and when Charnock reached the end he crouched in the snow and looked about.  Nobody was there and his ears were not of much use because the crash of ice drowned every other sound.  This made silence needless, and he tried to get between the logs and the water, but found it dangerous.  The chain had sagged with the strain, and the lowest tier was scarcely a foot from the bank, along which the ice-floes rasped.