“I should say a little to the left of that.”
“Well, it’s between those two points, and we can’t miss the shore, even if we don’t strike the lodge. As soon as we get close enough we can fire a gun as a signal to Fred and old Runnell.”
Once more they pushed on, in the very teeth of the blizzard, for such the storm had now become. The wind roared and shrieked around them, often tumbling them and the drags over in the snowdrifts. Soon even Joe was all but winded, and he willingly enough crouched beside Harry and the drags for a brief rest.
“This is certainly fierce,” he gasped out. “I never dreamed it would get so bad.”
“I only hope we can hold out until we reach some part of the island. If we can’t——” Harry did not finish, but the sigh he gave meant a good deal.
“Oh, you don’t want to give up so easily, Harry,” cried his brother, bracing up. “We’ve simply got to get over, or else go back to where we came from. We can’t stay out on the lake all night. We’d be frozen stiff.”
Once more they arose and caught hold of the drags. But now the loads were much too heavy for them.
“Let us take one and leave the other,” suggested Joe.
Feeling that that was the best they could do, they dropped Harry’s deer, and both caught hold of the drag Joe had been pulling. With their burdens thus lightened, they pushed on several hundred yards farther. But that was Harry’s limit, and again he sank down, this time as if ready to faint from exhaustion.
“It’s no—no use,” he sighed. “I can’t go an—another step!”