e-deep in slush and the two teams of dogs were nearly swimming.
Their feet could not reach the solid bed of ice below. The immense
weight of snow had pushed the ice down with the falling tide and the
rising tide had flooded it.

The team from Cape Norman took the lead to break the way. Every one
put on his snowshoes, for traveling without them was impossible. One
of those with the advance team went ahead of the dogs to tramp the
path for the sledge and make the work easier for the poor animals,
while the other remained with the team to drive. In like manner Walter
tramped ahead of the rear dogs and Doctor Grenfell drove them.

At length they reached the opposite shore, fighting against the gale
at every step. Now there was a hill to cross.

Here on the lee side of the hill they met mighty drifts of feathery
snow into which the dogs wallowed to their backs and the snowshoes of
the men sunk deep. They were compelled to haul on the traces with the
dogs. They had to lift and manipulate the sledges with tremendous
effort. Up the grade they toiled and strained, yard by yard, foot by
foot. Sometimes it seemed to them they were making no appreciable
progress, but on they fought through the black night and the driving
snow, sweating in spite of the Arctic blasts and clouds of drift that
sometimes nearly stopped their breath and carried them off their feet.

The life of the young fisherman's wife at Cape Norman hung in the
balance. The toiling men visualized her lying on a bed of pain and
perhaps dying for the need of a doctor. They saw the agonized husband
by her side, tortured by his helplessness to save her. They forgot
themselves and the risk they were taking in their desire to bring to
the fisherman's wife the help her husband was beseeching God to send.
This is true heroism.

As the saying on the coast goes, "'tis dogged as does it," and as
Grenfell himself says, "not inspiration, but perspiration wins the
prizes of life." They finally reached the crest of the hill.

On the opposite or weather side of the hill the gale met them with
full force. It had swept the slope clean and left it a glade of ice.
They slid down at a dangerous speed, taking all sorts of chances,
colliding in the darkness with stumps and ice-coated rocks and other
snags, in imminent danger of having their brains knocked out or limbs
broken.

The open places below were little better. Everything was ice-coated.
They slipped and slid about, falling a