d up in
a bark canoe, so as to get at the work, would be a difficult task. It
could not be accomplished without endangering the equilibrium of the
vessel, and indeed without upsetting it altogether. Even to lean forward
in the bow would be a perilous experiment; and under these
considerations the idea of breaking a way was abandoned.

But their provisions were at length entirely exhausted, and what was to
be done? The ice was still too weak to carry them. Near the shore it
might have been strong enough, but farther out lay the danger. There
they knew it was thinner, for it had not frozen over until a later
period. It would have been madness to have risked it yet. On the other
hand, they were starving, or likely to starve from hunger, by staying
where they were. There was nothing eatable on the island. What was to be
done? In the water were fish--they doubted not that--but how were they
to catch them? They had tried them with hook and line, letting the hook
through a hole in the ice; but at that late season the fish would not
take a bait, and although they kept several continually set, and
"looked" them most regularly and assiduously, not a "tail" was taken.

They were about to adopt the desperate expedient, now more difficult
than ever, of breaking their way through the ice, when, all at once, it
occurred to Norman, that, if they could not coax the fish to take a
bait, they might succeed better with a net, and capture them against
their will. This idea would have been plausible enough, had there been a
net; but there was no net on that islet, nor perhaps within an hundred
miles of it. The absence of a net might have been an obstacle to those
who are ever ready to despair; but such an obstacle never occurred to
our courageous boys. They had two _parchment_ skins of the caribou which
they had lately killed, and out of these Norman proposed to make a net.

He would soon do it, he said, if the others would set to work and cut
the deer-skins into thongs fine enough for the purpose. Two of them,
therefore, Basil and Lucien, took out their knives, and went briskly to
work; while Francois assisted Norman in twining the thongs, and
afterwards held them, while the latter wove and knotted them into
meshes. In a few hours both the skins were cut into fine strips, and
worked up; and a net was produced nearly six yards in length by at least
two in width. It was rude enough, to be sure, but perhaps it would do
its work as well as if