ng the motor-boat at a tiny fishing-hamlet, they borrowed a small
rowboat, and went out to "buck the ice."

The ice "made mock of their mad little craft." While they were hunting
to and fro for crevices through which they might work their way, their
old enemy the east wind was narrowing the channels till they saw that
the tiny cockle-shell must soon be caught in the grip of the ice-pack
and crushed to flinders.

"Jump out, Bill!" commanded the Doctor, setting the example. "We've
got to lift her onto the pan!"

They seized the prow and hauled with might and main.

But the boat was doomed. They could not pull the stern free in time.
The ice came on, ramming and jamming--and in an instant the stern was
cut off, and was crushed to kindling-wood. The ice chewed the
splinters savagely, as a husky gnaws a bone.

This time there was no question of repairs. They had half a boat, and
the gaunt cliffs of the shore were far away, with bits of ice dotting
the black water between.

They had their guns, and they fired at intervals to signal to the
shore.

"Evidently there ain't nobody at home," Bill remarked grimly. The pan
was taking them out to the sea, just as it did with Grenfell and the
dogs on that earlier memorable occasion.

Bill was a venturesome soul. "I'm going to copy," he announced
briefly.

That meant, as I have explained, that he would jump from one cake of
ice to the next. Eliza crossing the river-ice in "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
was nothing to the feat he set himself in that perilous, pitiless
northern sea. There was no causeway to the land. He would have to do
as a lumberman does in a log-jam, jumping before the object he has
stepped on has time to sink with him. There would be no chance to
think. He would have to keep on the move every instant, and death
might be the penalty of a misstep.

"Mebbe," said Bill, as coolly as though it were a question of running
bases at a ball-game, "mebbe I'll git close enough to the land so some
o' the boys 'll see me. Lend me your boat-hook, will you, Doctor?"

The Doctor, who would rather have taken the water-hazard himself,
passed over the boat-hook.

Bill jumped from pan to pan, nimble as a goat. Fortune seemed to be
favoring the brave. His leaps would have broken records at a
track-meet. Sometimes he put out the boat-hook after the manner of a
pole-vaulter, and flung himself with its aid across a terrifying
chasm.

But as Grenfell watched and waited in suspense, all