Stewart, his companion, another brawny Scot who had joined me at Dyea, rested his oar for a moment to breathe a sympathetic swear word of much intensity; then together they bent to their labours, and the rasp of the oars, and the brief swish of the eddying pools created, alone broke the deadly quiet.
Towards nightfall I was surprised to notice here and there large sheets of ice on the lake surface, and occasionally our heavily-laden boat would grind against these obstacles, shouldering them off with much effort: then my oarsmen's long sweeps would rend and split them as they passed alongside.
It was very plain that the Yukon headwaters were fast freezing over.
"We'll have to keep going all night, boys," I said, "for we'll be ice jammed if we camp anywhere around here."
The fierce torrent issuing from the end of the lake and rushing towards the dread White Horse Rapids would in all probability be free from ice—if we could reach that far.
Strenuously my companions pulled at their oars. The gloom deepened, then the stars came out, and by their feeble light I could distinguish far ahead a scintillating field of ice.
The sight caused me almost to despair—we had been sailing since early morning, and were tired and very hungry.
Before I could get the head of our boat turned inshore, it had crashed through several flaking sheets, and immediately after I realised that we were hopelessly in an ice maze from which there seemed no exit.
"We'll gang straight on," said Mac, with determination, and he levered powerfully with his oar against the frosted masses.