"It is a case of necessity with us," said Cabot.
"Yes," agreed White, "we simply must go, and the quicker we set about it the better. If we make haste I believe we can get across by dark."
Thus determined, and disregarding a further expostulation from the fisherman, our lads set their faces resolutely towards the confusion of hummocks, "pans," floes tilted on edge, and up-reared masses of blue ice forming the "strait's pack" of that season. Five minutes later they were lost to sight amid the frozen chaos.
"Wal," soliloquized the man left standing on shore, "Ah 'opes they'll make it, but it's a fearsome resk, an' Gawd 'elp 'em if come a shift o' wind afore they're over."
Nothing, in all their previous experience of Labrador travel, had equalled the tumultuous ruggedness of the way by which Cabot and White were now attempting to bridge that boisterous arm of the stormy northern ocean, and to advance at all taxed their strength to the utmost. To transport their laden sled was next to impossible, but they dared not leave it behind, and with their progress thus impeded they were barely half way to the Newfoundland coast when night overtook them. Even though the gathering darkness had not compelled a halt, their utter exhaustion would have demanded a rest. For an hour White had been obliged to clinch his teeth to keep from crying out with the pain of his weakened, and now overstrained, ankle, and when Cabot announced that it was no use trying to get further before morning, he sank to the ice with a groan.
Full of sympathy for his comrade's suffering, the Yankee lad at once set to work to make him as comfortable as circumstances would permit, and soon had him lying on a sleeping bag, in a niche formed by two uptilted slabs of ice. Profiting by past experience, they had procured and brought with them an Eskimo lamp with its moss wick, a small quantity of seal oil, and a supply of matches, so that, after a while, Cabot procured enough boiling water to furnish a small pot of tea. When they had eaten their simple meal of tea, hard bread, and pemmican, White's ankle was bathed with water as hot as he could bear it, and then the weary lads turned in for such sleep as their cheerless quarters might yield. About midnight the wind that had for many days blown steadily from the eastward changed to northwest, and, with the coming of daylight, it was blowing half a gale from that direction.
To Cabot this change meant little or nothing, and he was suggesting that they remain where they were until White's leg should be thoroughly rested, when the other interrupted him with:
"But we can't stay here. Don't you feel the change of wind?"
"What of it?" asked Cabot.
"Oh, nothing at all, only that it will drive the ice out to sea, and, if we haven't reached land before it begins to move, we'll go with it."