About midday, Captain Lund drove down on the ice to draw up the boat owned by his sons; after which he was to return a second time for the decoys and shooting-box of the homeward-bound sportsmen. The floe was fast wasting under the April sun, and his horses' iron-shod hoofs sank deep into the snow-ice, which the night-frosts had left at morn as hard as flint.
He drove with his habitual caution, sounding more than one suspicious place with the axe, and at last came to a long tide-crack, through which the open water showed clear, and which seemed to divide the floe as far as the eye could reach.
"I come none too soon," said the deliberate pilot; "and I must warn La Salle not to trust his boat here another night."
"Well, captain, what think you of the weather?" asked La Salle, as the shaggy pony and rough sled halted near the boat.
"It looks a little cloudy, but I guess nothing more than a fog may be expected to-night. You had better have your boat ready to get ashore right away; for the ice, though heavy enough, is full of cracks, and will go off with the first northerly gale which comes with the ebb."
"Well, I'll be getting the boat clear of the ice, and you may come for us the last of all."
And Lund, driving down the bar to his own boat, left La Salle busily at work, with axe and shovel, clearing away the well-packed ice which had for the last three weeks concealed the sides of the goose-boat.
By the time that Lund had hooked on to his own boat and driven up again, a large heap of ice and snow had been thrown out; but the runners were evidently frozen down, and the boat was immovable.
"I shan't have her clear until you get through with Davies's outfit; but I guess we shall be ready for you then."
Lund drove on, dragging the heavy boat up to the beach, and then concluded to haul it up the bank, above the reach of the increasing tides, and the danger of being crushed by the ice. As he cast off her rope, he felt a snow-flake on the back of his hand. Before he reached the ice, they were falling thick and noiselessly.