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It was so dark that I could hardly see fifty yards ahead. There was a great chasm or hole just in front of me. This was the place where the main body of the sea-ice had been separated from the shore-ice that was aground. Here every rise and fall of the tide had broken it afresh, so that the rent was twenty yards wide, and full of large blocks that had been tossed about in confusion.
And he chose one of the common sailors instead. And when we walked out to the thick edge of the shore-ice and launched the canoe among a whirling drift of ice-pans, we had small hope of ever seeing Fort Bourbon again. The ice had not the thickness of the spring jam, but it was sharp enough to cut our canoe, and we poled our way far oftener than we paddled.
Not a sign of the two men was to be seen, either on the submarine, in the water or on the solid shore-ice, a few rods away. "What d' y' think of that?" asked Jarvis, mopping his brow. "They're gone!" "Perhaps they drowned." "Mebbe drowned mebby they're 'id h'in th' h'ice." "Well, anyway, we're rid of them," said Dave.
To add to their misfortunes, the dogs began to flag, so that they were obliged to walk behind the sledge at a slow pace, and snow began to fall heavily. But they pressed forward manfully, and having regained the shore-ice, continued to make their way northward towards the ship, which was now spoken of by the endearing name of home.
When they did succeed in clearing the shore-ice, the floating ice forced the boat along the edge for a hundred yards, tearing away half of one gunwale and making a partial wreck of it. Then, at the lower end of the bend, they caught the current that flung off-shore. They proceeded to work farther toward the middle. The stream was no longer composed of mush-ice but of hard cakes.
The first hundred yards were easy going, but she noticed at once the change when they had passed the limit of the fairly solid shore-ice. Her father led sturdily, feeling ahead and to the side with his staff and changing direction continually. St.
One look back showed them several boats which had fought through the night and were hopelessly frozen in; then they whirled around a bend in a current running six miles an hour. Day by day they floated down the swift river, and day by day the shore-ice extended farther out.
"I tell only of what my eyes beheld. And after a while the bear grew weak and tired, for he was very heavy and he had jumped about with exceeding violence, and he went off along the shore-ice, shaking his head slowly from side to side and sitting down ever and again to squeal and cry. And Keesh followed after the bear, and we followed after Keesh, and for that day and three days more we followed.
I at once, but with great reluctance, shot Reinhardt, and set to work to get the last of the provisions, and the most necessary of the implements, into the kayak, making haste to put out to the toilless luxury of being borne on the water, after all the weary trudge. Within fourteen hours I was coasting, with my little lug-sail spread, along the shore-ice of that land.
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