ome out from the shore through the sort of sea that was
now running. The great pans of ice, rising and falling on the waves,
were crashing and charging into the cliffs alongshore "like medieval
battering-rams," and the white spray dashed high against the rocks
with a sullen roar as of artillery. It would be necessary to skin some
of the dogs and use their pelts for blankets, in order to escape
freezing in the terrible cold of the oncoming night. Imagine how hard
it was for their master to choose which should be slain!

He had the sealskin traces wound about his waist, to keep the hungry
animals from devouring them. He now undid them, and made a hangman's
noose. This he slipped over the head of one of the dogs. Then he threw
the animal on his back, put his foot on his neck, and stabbed him to
the heart. The struggling creature bit his master--a deep gash--in
the leg, but Grenfell kept the knife in the dog till the poor beast
lay still, that the blood might not spurt out and freeze on the skin.
Two more animals were put to death in the same fashion, and one of
them bit him again in the death throes. So violent was the battle that
the Doctor fully expected the pan to break up as they fought, and let
them all into the sea.

With the strange indifference that "huskies" generally show to the
fate of their fellows, the other dogs were licking their coats and
trying to dry themselves. The Doctor had done his best to stifle the
cries of the slain animals, for these would have roused them to a
frenzy and led them to fall upon the under dog, and upon one another
as well, and a general fight at such close quarters would have been
disastrous.

He found himself envying the dead dogs, and wondering whether, when
they came to the open sea, it would not be better to use his knife on
himself than to die, inch by agonizing inch, in the freezing water.

When the dogs were skinned, and the harness had been used to lash the
skins together, it was nearly dark, and they were fully ten miles out
at sea.

To the north he spied a solitary light, twinkling from the village he
had left in the morning. He thought of the fishermen sitting down to
their tea: and he knew they would not think of him as in danger, for
he had told them he would not be back for three days. And all the
"liveyeres" think of Grenfell as a man who knows the coast so well,
and the ways of getting about, that he is far more likely to give help
than to ask it of them.

He