ch of the breakers, he would
find himself at a point where he could begin a lonely trek overland, a
hundred miles to the railroad, with his pack of food and clothing on
his stalwart shoulders.

Just such a lonely walk as that many a sealer, fisherman or clergyman
has made. If night overtakes a man, and he is far from a hut, he kicks
a hole in a drift, lines it with fir boughs, makes his fire and crawls
in snugly. He finds snow-water will not hurt him if he mixes it with
tea or sugar. Grenfell, accustomed to hiking with the dog-team, felt
no dread of a night with a snow-bank for his feather-bed.

The start was made auspiciously. The ice kept well out of the way till
Grenfell, who had one man with him, cleared the harbor. As they went
on, however, the east wind spied the bold little craft, and came on
like an evil thing, to play cat-and-mouse with it.

It brought in the ice, and the ice was constantly pushing the boat
toward the shore, toward which the current was pulling like a
remorseless unseen hand.

"Keep her off the rocks, Bill!" warned the Doctor, poling vigorously
at the stern.

"I'm tryin' to, sir. But the wind is wonderful strong, and I'm
thinkin'----"

Whatever Bill was thinking, he was rudely interrupted by a rock that
did not show above the surface. They were in a most perilous position.
The boat, caught on the tidal reef, tossed to and fro, and the
propeller, lifted high out of water, whirled like an electric fan.
Through a hole in the prow the water rushed in. The two men sprang to
the leak and stuffed it with their hats and coats and anything on
which they could lay their hands.

Fortunately the hole was not large, and as they had hammer and nails
and pieces of board for such an emergency they managed to shut out the
water with rude patchwork. They bailed the boat and shoved it off
again, and crept onward. But the thermometer dropped fast, and in the
intense cold the circulating pipes froze and burst. That damage, too,
was laboriously repaired, and they went ashore and spent the night
under the glittering starlight with no coverlid but juniper boughs,
beside a roaring fire. The next day they saw that the ice had so
closed in to the southward that their little boat could not possibly
go forward.

They must, therefore, retreat to St. Anthony, and try to get round the
Cape and into the Straits of Belle Isle.

But they found they were now shut off even from their home port of St.
Anthony!

Leavi