turned bottom up.

"W-w-watch out, old man," cried he of the chattering teeth.

Rasmunsen grinned and tightened his aching grip on the sweep. Scores of
times had the send of the sea caught the big square stern of the _Alma_
and thrown her off from dead before it till the after leach of the
spritsail fluttered hollowly, and each time, and only with all his
strength, had he forced her back. His grin by then had become fixed, and
it disturbed the correspondents to look at him.

They roared down past an isolated rock a hundred yards from shore. From
its wave-drenched top a man shrieked wildly, for the instant cutting the
storm with his voice. But the next instant the _Alma_ was by, and the
rock growing a black speck in the troubled froth.

"That settles the Yankee! Where's the sailor?" shouted one of his
passengers.

Rasmunsen shot a glance over his shoulder at a black square-sail. He had
seen it leap up out of the grey to windward, and for an hour, off and on,
had been watching it grow. The sailor had evidently repaired damages and
was making up for lost time.

"Look at him come!"

Both passengers stopped chopping ice to watch. Twenty miles of Bennett
were behind them--room and to spare for the sea to toss up its mountains
toward the sky. Sinking and soaring like a storm-god, the sailor drove
by them. The huge sail seemed to grip the boat from the crests of the
waves, to tear it bodily out of the water, and fling it crashing and
smothering down into the yawning troughs.

"The sea'll never catch him!"

"But he'll r-r-run her nose under!"

Even as they spoke, the black tarpaulin swooped from sight behind a big
comber. The next wave rolled over the spot, and the next, but the boat
did not reappear. The _Alma_ rushed by the place. A little riffraff of
oats and boxes was seen. An arm thrust up and a shaggy head broke
surface a score of yards away.

For a time there was silence. As the end of the lake came in sight, the
waves began to leap aboard with such steady recurrence that the
correspondents no longer chopped ice but flung the water out with
buckets. Even this would not do, and, after a shouted conference with
Rasmunsen, they attacked the baggage. Flour, bacon, beans, blankets,
cooking-stove, ropes, odds and ends, everything they could get hands on,
flew overboard. The boat acknowledged it at once, taking less water and
rising more buoyantly.

"That'll do!" Rasmunsen called sternly, as they