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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 they caught the current at the lower end of the bend 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.
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.
All the ice which I saw was good flat fjord-ice, and the plan seemed feasible enough; so after coasting about a little, and then three days' good rest in the tent at the bottom of a ravine of columnar basalt opening upon the shore, I packed some bear and walrus flesh, with what artificial food was left, into the kayak, and I set out early in the morning, coasting the shore-ice with sail and paddle.
The men on the shore filled the air with good-luck farewells and last advice, but the three hundred grubless ones, turning their backs on the golden dream, were moody and dispirited, and made small response. The Laura backed out through a channel cut in the shore-ice, swung about in the current, and with a final blast put on full steam ahead.
She is far away. Very often she is like that, thinking far away. Sometimes, when she is thinking far away, her face is not good to see. It looks like a face that is angry, like the face of one man when he want to kill another man. "Last day to Dawson very bad. Shore-ice in all the eddies, mush-ice in the stream. I cannot paddle. The canoe freeze to ice. I cannot get to shore. There is much danger.
He threw the paddle overboard and seized another. A few more yards were won, but the shore loomed black and forbidding, and many yards away. Despite the utmost efforts of the women and the two canoemen, the water gained rapidly. Lapierre redoubled his exertion, chopping and stabbing at the ever thickening shore-ice.
Vainly Daylight staggered and stumbled and fell and crept through the snow that was wet with thaw, or across it when the night's frost still crusted it beyond the weight of a man, searching for one more squirrel, striving to achieve one more transmutation of furry leap and scolding chatter into the lifts and tugs of a man's body that would hoist the boat over the rim of shore-ice and slide it down into the stream.
And the first thing we did was to hold a service of thanks to God Almighty for our deliverance. See Radisson's account Prince Society , Boston Bodleian Library. Canadian Archives, 1895-'96. Filling the air with ghost-shadows, silencing earth, muffling the sea, day after day fell the snow. Shore-ice barred out the pounding surf. The river had frozen to adamant.
"The shore-ice is gone, as you can see for yourself, and the drift-ice will not be down this way until near June," replied Darling. "But don't make any more excuses, George. You are not the man I want, anyway, for I see that you are no good for anything but asking questions. I'll be able to find some lad in Witless Bay, with a boat of some sort, who isn't afraid of the coast to the southward."
This is a contingency to which the hunters are constantly liable, and is the greatest danger to which they are subjected in their pursuit. Many are thus carried away, sometimes out to sea, and are never heard from again; while others have been drifted a long distance from their homes before the drift again touched the shore-ice and allowed them to find their way back, if possible.
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