g, and at noon they left the tent and poles behind.

"In another few days," said Wyllard, "we'll leave the sled."

They made the beach that afternoon, though the only sign of it was the
fringe of more ragged ice and the white slope beyond the latter. A
thin haze hung about them heavy with frosty rime, and they could not
see more than a quarter of a mile ahead. When darkness fell they
scraped out a hollow beneath what seemed to be a snow-covered rock, and
sat upon their sleeping bags about the cooking lamp. Then, having
eaten, they huddled close together with part of their aching bodies
upon the sled in a bitter frost, but none of them slept much that night.

The morning broke clear and warmer, and Wyllard, climbing to the summit
of the rock, had a brief glimpse of the serrated summits of a great
white range that rose out of a dingy greyness to the west and south.
It, however, faded like a vision while he watched it, and turning he
looked out across the rolling wilderness that stretched away to the
north. Nothing broke its gleaming monotony, and there was no sign of
life anywhere in the vast expanse. By and bye it narrowed, and when he
clambered down the haze was creeping in again.

They set out after breakfast, breaking through a thin crust of snow,
which rendered the march almost insuperably difficult, and they had
painfully made a league or two by the approach of night. The snow had
grown softer, and the thawing surface would not bear the sled, which
sunk in the slush beneath. Still, they floundered on for a while after
darkness fell, and then lay down in a hollow, packed close together,
while a fine rain poured down on them.

Somehow they slept, and, though this was more difficult, got upon their
feet again when morning came, for of all the hard things the wanderer
in rain-swept bush or frozen wilderness must bear there is none that
tests his powers more than the bracing himself for another day of
effort in the early dawn. Comfortless as the night's lair has been,
the jaded body craves for such faint warmth as it afforded, and further
rest, the brain is dull and heavy, and the aching limbs appear
incapable of supporting the weight on them. Difficulties loom
appallingly large in the faint creeping light, courage fails, and the
will grows feeble. Wyllard and his companions felt all this, but it
was clear to them that they could not dally, with their provisions
running out, and staggering out of camp after