That was
the case here. The smallest dog of the lot, "Jack," came to the
rescue. He was so small that he was not taken very seriously for his
hauling power--but when it came to hunting, he was there with all four
paws, and he was used as retriever when Dr. Grenfell went out with a
gun. Here was a chance for him to show the stuff that was in his
black, rough hide.

"Jack!" said the Doctor. "Hist! Hist!" And he pointed to the other
pan, and threw a piece of ice in that direction.

"Jack" understood and instantly obeyed. In little more time than it
takes to tell of it, his furry paws had taken his small body through
and over the rotten mush. Since he was the lightest of the lot, he
scarcely sank below the surface as he went. "His frame was little but
his soul was large."

When he got there he turned about, wagging his tail as a flag-signal,
his tongue lolling out, his whole attitude seeming to say, "Well,
aren't you pleased with me?"

"Lie down!" shouted Grenfell, and the dog at once obeyed--"a little
black fuzz ball on the white setting."

That was an object lesson to "Brin" and the other dog. The next time
he threw them off they made directly for the other pan. It was a hard
fight to get there, but they must have said to themselves: "What dog
has done, dog can do. If that little fellow can turn the trick, so can
we." So they plashed and floundered through, their heads barely above
the waves, and the salt spray in their eyes, till they had carried the
lines across. The traces had been knotted securely under their
bellies, so they could not come off when the Doctor pulled with the
weight of his body against the lines.

He took as much of a run as he could get in the few feet from side to
side of the pan, and dived headlong into the "slob." It was a long,
hard pull, but the lines held, and the dogs too, so that presently he
found himself scrambling up beside them on the other pan where they
were waiting with little "Jack."

To his crushing disappointment, Dr. Grenfell found that the place
where he now clung was if anything worse than the spot he had left. By
this time all the other dogs but one poor fellow had made the
distance, and were beside him, their eyes asking the piteous questions
their tongues could not utter.

"What does this mean, master? What are you going to do with us now?
Which is the way home? Why don't we start? How soon are we going to
have our suppers?"

The pan was sinking: it could not hol