swered Bobby. "We'll catch you before you reach smooth
ice."

So Skipper Ed drove away with never a thought of catastrophe, and was
quickly swallowed up by the thickening snow, while Bobby and Jimmy
loaded the seals and the things from the _igloo_ upon the sledge, and,
spurred by the rising wind and snow, hurried with all their might.

Already great seas were booming and breaking with a roar upon the ice,
and as the boys turned the dogs back upon the trail they observed a
waving motion of the ice beneath them, which was rapidly becoming more
apparent. At one moment the dogs would be hauling the sledge up an
incline, and at the next moment the sledge would be coasting down
another incline close upon the heels of the team, as the heaving ice
assumed the motion of the seas which rolled beneath.

As they receded from the ice edge, however, this motion diminished,
until finally it was hardly perceptible at all, and there seemed no
further cause for alarm or great speed, and the dogs, which were weary
with the two days' heavy hauling, were permitted to proceed at their own
leisurely gait.

At length through the snow they saw Skipper Ed waiting for them, but
when he was assured they were following he proceeded.

"_Ah!_" Bobby shouted to his dogs a moment later, bringing them suddenly
to a stop. "I've dropped my whip somewhere. Jimmy, watch the team while
I run back after it."

Twenty minutes elapsed before he returned with the whip, and they drove
on.

Skipper Ed, satisfied that Bobby and Jimmy were close at his heels, did
not halt again until well out over the smooth ice and near to Itigailit
Island, when he heard behind him a strange rumbling and crackling. He
halted and listened, and strained his eyes through the drifting snow
for a glimpse of the boys. They were not visible, and, springing from
his _komatik_, he ran back in the direction from which he had come and
as fast as he could run, and presently, with a sickening sensation at
his heart, was brought to a halt by a broad black space of open water.

The great ice pack upon which they had been hunting had broken loose
from the shore ice, and tide and wind were driving it seaward. Already
the chasm between him and the floe had widened to over thirty feet, and
it was rapidly growing wider. The minutes dragged and when at last Bobby
and Jimmy came into view on the opposite side of the chasm it was a full
two hundred feet in breadth. They shouted to the dogs and ru