y would reach Sixty Mile and be saved,
if--and again the if--he had strength enough to land the boat at Sixty
Mile and not go by.

He set to work. The wall of ice was five feet above the ground on
which the boat rested. First prospecting for the best launching-place,
he found where a huge cake of ice shelved upward from the river that
ran fifteen feet below to the top of the wall. This was a score of
feet away, and at the end of an hour he had managed to get the boat
that far. He was sick with nausea from his exertions, and at times it
seemed that blindness smote him, for he could not see, his eyes vexed
with spots and points of light that were as excruciating as
diamond-dust, his heart pounding up in his throat and suffocating him.
Elijah betrayed no interest, did not move nor open his eyes; and
Daylight fought out his battle alone. At last, falling on his knees
from the shock of exertion, he got the boat poised on a secure balance
on top the wall. Crawling on hands and knees, he placed in the boat
his rabbit-skin robe, the rifle, and the pail. He did not bother with
the ax. It meant an additional crawl of twenty feet and back, and if
the need for it should arise he well knew he would be past all need.

Elijah proved a bigger task than he had anticipated. A few inches at a
time, resting in between, he dragged him over the ground and up a
broken rubble of ice to the side of the boat. But into the boat he
could not get him. Elijah's limp body was far more difficult to lift
and handle than an equal weight of like dimensions but rigid. Daylight
failed to hoist him, for the body collapsed at the middle like a
part-empty sack of corn. Getting into the boat, Daylight tried vainly
to drag his comrade in after him. The best he could do was to get
Elijah's head and shoulders on top the gunwale. When he released his
hold, to heave from farther down the body, Elijah promptly gave at the
middle and came down on the ice.

In despair, Daylight changed his tactics. He struck the other in the
face.

"God Almighty, ain't you-all a man?" he cried. "There! damn you-all!
there!"

At each curse he struck him on the cheeks, the nose, the mouth,
striving, by the shock of the hurt, to bring back the sinking soul and
far-wandering will of the man. The eyes fluttered open.

"Now listen!" he shouted hoarsely. "When I get your head to the
gunwale, hang on! Hear me? Hang on! Bite into it with your teeth,
but HANG ON!"