le. Several times the men tried it, only to come sprawling
in a heap at the bottom of the hill.

"Two of you get up to the top!" ordered the keeper.

Two of the lightest men started. One of them, picking his steps with
great care, managed to get half-way up; the other, going back for a run,
tried to take the hill with a tremendous spurt. His impetus took him
almost up to the top, but he was a few feet short and slipped back. He
returned for another attempt.

In the meantime Eric had an idea. Instead of attacking the cliff at the
point the others were trying, and where it was shallowest, he went
twenty yards farther west, where the cliff was steeper, but rougher.
Taking an ax he started to cut niches for steps up the cliff. He knew it
would take a long time, but if the others did not succeed before him, he
would at least get there. If the others succeeded, the loss of his time
did not matter.

So, steadily, inch by inch, foot by foot, he made his way up the cliff,
taking the time to make the notches deep enough for surety. The ice was
not extremely hard, and Eric soon won his way to the top. He found the
edge exceedingly difficult to walk on and very dangerous, for it fell in
an almost sheer precipice on the water side, with the mush-ice beating
up against it. The top, too, was soft and honeycombed. Using as much
care in going along the edge as he had in scaling it, the boy soon found
himself on the cliff immediately above the cart.

"Here, you fellows," he called, "heave me up a line!"

There was a second's surprise when the other members of the crew saw
Eric on the crest of the ice-barrier which so far had defied them all.

"Good work!" called the keeper. "Jefferson, toss up the line."

Eric caught it.

"Have you a spike or anything?" he called, "I'll haul it up!"

The keeper yanked out one of the spikes of the frame on which the line
was faked and the boy carefully hauled it up, then drove it into the ice
as hard as he could, using his heavy boot for a hammer. He next took the
line, and wound it around the spike to help him in holding it.

"Now," he yelled through the storm, "some one can come up the rope."

"Muldoon," said the keeper to the Irishman, "you're about the lightest,
you go up first."

"'Tis meself will do it," was the reply, "an' it's blitherin' idjits we
were not to think o' the way the kid did it."

Then he shinned up the rope like a monkey on a stick.

With both Muldoon and Eric hangin