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Updated: June 6, 2025
The other two awoke, groaning with the pain of stiffened muscles and the pain of rousing from exhausted sleep. "What time is it?" Stine asked. "Half-past eight." "It's dark yet," was the objection. Shorty jerked out a couple of guy-ropes, and the tent began to sag. "It's not morning," he said. "It's evening. Come on. The lake's freezin'. We got to get acrost."
A cup of coffee, set aside to cool and forgotten, a few minutes later was found coated with half an inch of ice. At eight o'clock, when Sprague and Stine, already rolled in their blankets, were sleeping the sleep of exhaustion, Kit came back from a look at the boat. "It's the freeze-up, Shorty," he announced. "There's a skin of ice over the whole pond already." "What are you going to do?"
"If you'll take my orders, I'll get her off," Sprague finally said. The attempt was well intended, but before he could clamber on board he was wet to the waist. "We've got to camp and build a fire," he said, as the boat grounded again. "I'm freezing." "Don't be afraid of a wetting," Stine sneered. "Other men have gone off to-day wetter than you. Now I'm going to take her out."
This made a rough sea, against which it was almost impossible to pull the boat. Added to their troubles was driving snow; also, the freezing of the water on their oar-blades kept one man occupied in chopping it off with a hatchet. Compelled to take their turn at the oars, Sprague and Stine patently loafed.
Stine complained of frosted fingers, and Sprague of his nose, while the pain in Kit's cheeks and nose told him that he, too, had been touched. With each accretion of daylight they could see farther, and far as they could see was icy surface. The water of the lake was gone. A hundred yards away was the shore of the north end.
Sprague looked at Stine. "I'm damned if I do," said that gentleman. "If you're not afraid to stand here and look on, I'm not." "Who's afraid?" Sprague demanded hotly. Stine retorted in kind, and their two men left them in the thick of a squabble. "We can do without them," Kit said to Shorty. "You take the bow with a paddle, and I'll handle the steering-sweep.
In the morning, as usual, they were among the last of the boats to start. Breck, despite his boating inefficiency, and with only his wife and nephew for crew, had broken camp, loaded his boat, and pulled out at the first streak of day. But there was no hurrying Stine and Sprague, who seemed incapable of realizing that the freeze-up might come at any time.
"Running," she said, and her voice had a toneless emptiness that screamed louder than any emotion. "They ran by the open door of my room and I could see them when they killed Dr. Stine. Just butchered him like an animal, chopping him down. Then one came into the room and that's all I remember." She turned her head slowly and looked at Brion. "What happened? Why am I here?"
Stine nodded agreement and Brion relaxed a bit. He had just relieved himself of his entire knowledge of societics, and it had sounded authentic. "The more I look at it the more I believe that this is a physical problem, something to do with the exotic and massive adjustments the Disans have made to this hellish environment.
Kit had learned how to throw his weight on an oar, but he noted that his employers made a seeming of throwing their weights and that they dipped their oars at a cheating angle. At the end of three hours, Sprague pulled his oar in and said they would run back into the mouth of the river for shelter. Stine seconded him, and the several hard-won miles were lost.
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