Then with a final effort he got his free leg with its snow-shoe, over the pole, and seizing the husky's tail with both hands, cried:
"Marche, Fleur! Marche!"
Settling low between wide-spread fore-legs, the dog dug her nails into the soft ice and hurled her weight into a fierce lunge. As her feet slipped, the legs of the husky worked like piston rods showering Marcel's face with water, her nails gouging the ice, while she fought the drag of the net.
At last, something gave way, Marcel felt himself move. Slowly the great dog drew her master over the pole and upon the ice with the net still anchored to his right foot.
Still gripping Fleur's tail in his left hand, with the other he finally reached his knife and groping in the icy water slashed the heel thong of the caught shoe. Free, Marcel limped to his camp, Fleur, now leaping beside him, now marching proudly with his sleeve in her teeth.
The heat of the fire and the hot broth soon started the blood of the half-frozen Frenchman, who lay muffled in a blanket. Near him sprawled the husky, who had sensed only too acutely on the ice the danger menacing her master and would not now leave his sight, but with head on paws watched the blanketed figure through eyes which spoke the thoughts she could not express: "Jean may need Fleur again. She will stay with him by the fire."
Once too often, Marcel mused, he had gambled with the rotten spring ice, and now had barely missed paying for his rashness. To drown in a hole like a muskrat, after pulling out of the starvation days with a cache heavy with meat and fish, was unthinkable. But, after all, what did it matter? Life would be of small value now with Julie out of it.