Adrift in the Ice-Fields

by Charles Winslow Hall

"There is a steamer on the outer edge of the pack, I think. You will see her smoke in line with the East Point yonder."

"Yes, Regnie, that is a steamer, sure enough, and she will make her way to the centre of the pack. Let us hasten to the floe and take to the boats. We can perhaps reach her by rowing through the narrow leads before the gale rises."

Hastening down the side of the watercourse they descended the berg, and set off along its base, in the direction of the hut. As they passed they gave a last glance at the sealer's tomb. Down the path they had ascended, dashed an overflowing torrent, which disappeared with a whirl and hollow gurgle into the yawning aperture, while the whole front of the wall which they had ascended, dripped with water and glittered with spray.

"The keenest eye among the hunters of the Mistassini could not uncover that trail; and known to God and us alone is the bloody mystery of the Deadman's Berg."

"Don't talk of that again, Regnie. Let the dead rest. Perhaps it may yet transpire that he was penitent at the last, and you may have good reason to rejoice that you knelt beside his last bed, in a tomb so wondrously beautiful."

"We must hasten faster, Charley, for the fog is coming, and we may find the floes separated. Remember our friends know nothing of all we have seen and heard, and to them I am still Regnar Orloff, half educated, and a simple pilot of the Labrador."

With increased speed the pair pressed forward, crossing with difficulty the gulf, which had opened between the berg and the first heavy floe. Pole in hand, with one end of the rope attached to his belt, and his gun slung at his back, Orloff led the way, while La Salle followed at the other end, carrying an axe in his belt, and another in his hand. Luckily many large fragments lay floating in the first lead, and prevented from slipping by their sharp "crampets," they leaped from cake to cake, and safely reached the second floe.

The mist clung damp to their faces as they attained the end of the second floe, where a lead of water some twenty yards in width, and clear of ice, intervened between them and the next. The quick eye of Regnar caught sight of a small ice-cake floating by the windward side of their floe, and leaping upon it, with pole and hands they shoved it along the steep walls of ice, and with their united force gave it a final impetus in the desired direction. The fragment whirled and bent beneath them, until the water stood above their ankles; but just as they began to fear a complete submersion, Orloff caught a projection of the field with his boat-hook, and the two landed in safety.

As they hurried across the last floe, the rain fell, and the wind blew heavily, dashing huge cakes against the windward side with a ceaseless crashing of broken ice. Before they could reach the end of the field, they saw their own turn as if on a pivot, and grind slowly past the leeward point of the one across which they pressed at full speed. Their efforts were in vain, for before they could reach the verge their refuge was twenty feet distant; but Regnar was equal to the emergency.

"Cast loose your rope, Charley," said he; and in five seconds he had coiled and whirled it twenty feet across the intervening chasm, to Peter, who seized and retained it. "Now, La Salle, follow me," he cried; and springing upon a floating fragment, he balanced himself with his pole until he reached a more stable support farther from the berg.