The whalebone hut of his last Arctic camp was eight hundred miles due north.

Fort Churchill, over on Hudson's Bay, was four hundred miles to the east, and Fort Resolution, on the Great Slave, was four hundred miles to the west.

On his map he had drawn a heavy circle about Prince Albert, six hundred miles to the south.

That was the nearest line of rail.

Six days back Radisson had died after a mouth's struggle with that terrible thing they called "le mort rouge," or the Red Death.