They shot ahead again. Evening settled early, with the snow falling thick. The ice was white now; skates and toboggan left black streaks, immediately obliterated by fresh flakes. Just before complete darkness fell, the boys made a short halt, built a fire, and boiled tea. No more was said of camping. They had tacitly resolved to struggle on as long as they could keep going, for they knew that they would have no chance to use their skates after that night.
It grew dark, but never pitch dark, for the reflection from the snow gave light enough for them to see the road. Even yet the snow lay so light that the blades cut it without an effort.
The wind, however, was hard to fight against. In spite of his amateur championship, Fred was the first to give out. For some time he had felt himself flagging, dropping behind, and then recovering; but all at once his legs gave way, and he collapsed in a heap on the ice, half unconscious from fatigue.
Macgregor and Stark bent over him.
"Got to put him on the toboggan," declared the Scotchman.
Maurice felt that it was madness for two of them to try to haul the greater load, but without protest he helped to roll the dazed youngster in the blankets, and to strap him on the sledge. The next stage always seemed to him a sort of waking nightmare; he never quite knew how long it lasted. The wind bore against him like a wall; the drag of the toboggan seemed intolerable. Half dead with exhaustion and fatigue, he fixed his eyes on Macgregor's broad back, and went on with short, forced strokes, with the feeling that each marked the extreme limit of his strength.
Suddenly his leader stopped. A great black space seemed to have opened in the white road ahead.
"Another portage!" Macgregor shouted in Maurice's ear.
A long, unfrozen rapid was thundering in the gloom. With maddening difficulty, Maurice and Macgregor hacked a road through willow thickets and got the toboggan past.
Again they were on the ice, with the rapid behind them. It seemed to Maurice that the horror of that exertion would never end; then suddenly the night seemed to turn pitch black, and he felt himself shaken by the shoulder.