“Oh, but I want to get ashore!” exclaimed Paul. “Couldn’t we launch off here?”
“We might and we mightn’t,” answered Dan cautiously. “We can’t move th’ boat without unloadin’ she. If we launches on the lee, th’ ice’ll be likely to ram in, an’ smash un ag’in, before we gets free, an’ if we tries to launch on ary other side th’ waves’ll be smashin’ un ag’in’ th’ ice before we gets th’ outfit aboard. And anyway, if we unloads th’ outfit on th’ ice th’ sea’s like to work un overboard before we gets th’ boat launched. I’m thinkin’ we’d better tarry a bit.”
Dan’s surmise proved correct. The ice slowly swept past the point, and, carried upon the bosom of a rising tide, they gradually passed into a bay, and calmer water.
“Now,” announced Dan, who had been watching his opportunity, “we’ll try un.”
The things were taken out of the boat, the boat pushed off and alongside the pan and easily reloaded in the now gentle swell, and the boys with their outfit aboard shoved out into the bay.
The one remaining oar Dan took astern, dropped it between two pegs placed there for the purpose, and working the oar adeptly back and forth both propelled and steered the boat shoreward. The damaged bow was found to be so well repaired that it leaked very little, and in a few minutes a safe landing was made upon a sloping, gravelly bit of beach.
For several minutes the boys stood silent, looking toward the fog-enshrouded sea from which they had just been delivered. Dan at length broke silence:
“Thank the Lord, we’re safe ashore,” said he reverently.
“Yes, it’s almost too good to believe.” Tears of joy stood in Paul’s eyes as he spoke. “When the ship finds us and picks us up, Dan, I’m going to tell Captain Bluntt that it was all my fault we didn’t go aboard when he told us to, and I’m going to tell everybody how you saved our lives by mending the boat. We never could have got off the ice if you hadn’t mended the boat.”
“’Twere nothin’ to mend th’ boat,” deprecated Dan.