enly to petrify. His eyes
fixed themselves in a terrible stare over Frona's shoulder. And then,
slowly and dreamily, with the solemnity fitting an invocation of Deity,
murmured, "Guid Gawd Almichty!"

They whirled their heads about. A wall of ice was sweeping round the
bend, and even as they looked the right-hand flank, unable to compass
the curve, struck the further shore and flung up a ridge of heaving
mountains.

"Guid Gawd! Guid Gawd! Like rats i' the trap!" Tommy jabbed his
paddle futilely in the water.

"Get the stroke!" Corliss hissed in his ear, and La Bijou sprang away.

Frona steered straight across the current, at almost right angles, for
Split-up; but when the sandspit, over which they had portaged, crashed
at the impact of a million tons, Corliss glanced at her anxiously. She
smiled and shook her head, at the same time slacking off the course.

"We can't make it," she whispered, looking back at the ice a couple of
hundred feet away. "Our only chance is to run before it and work in
slowly."

She cherished every inward inch jealously, holding the canoe up as
sharply as she dared and at the same time maintaining a constant
distance ahead of the ice-rim.

"I canna stand the pace," Tommy whimpered once; but the silence of
Corliss and Frona seemed ominous, and he kept his paddle going.

At the very fore of the ice was a floe five or six feet thick and a
couple of acres in extent. Reaching out in advance of the pack, it
clove through the water till on either side there formed a bore like
that of a quick flood-tide in an inland passage. Tommy caught sight of
it, and would have collapsed had not Corliss prodded him, between
strokes, with the point of his paddle.

"We can keep ahead," Frona panted; "but we must get time to make the
landing?"

"When the chance comes, drive her in, bow on," Corliss counselled; "and
when she strikes, jump and run for it."

"Climb, rather. I'm glad my skirt is short."

Repulsed by the bluffs of the left bank, the ice was forced towards the
right. The big floe, in advance, drove in upon the precise point of
Split-up Island.

"If you look back, I'll brain you with the paddle," Corliss threatened.

"Ay," Tommy groaned.

But Corliss looked back, and so did Frona. The great berg struck the
land with an earthquake shock. For fifty feet the soft island was
demolished. A score of pines swayed frantically and went down, and
where they went down rose up a mountain