CHAPTER X.
"DEATH SHRIVE THY SOUL!"
It was an immense relief to stand in the boat with the boat-hook, whose use demanded all the skill and nerve which Caius had at command. For the most part they could only propel the boat by pushing or pulling the bits of ice that surrounded it with their poles. It was a very different sort of travel from that which they had experienced together when they had carried their boat over islands of ice and launched it in the great gaps between them. The ice which they had to do with now would not have borne their weight; nor was there much clear space for rowing between the fragments. O'Shea pushed the boat boldly on, and they made their journey with comparative ease until, when they came near the channel made by the steamship, they found the ice lying more closely, and the difficulty of their progress increased.
Work as they would, they were getting on but slowly. The light wind blew past their faces, and the Gaspé schooner was seen to sail up the path which the steamer had made across the bay.
"The wind's in the very chink that makes her able to take the channel. I'm thinking she'll be getting in before us."
O'Shea spoke with the gay indifference of one who had staked nothing on the hope of getting to the harbour first; but Caius wondered if this short cut would have been undertaken without strong reason.
A short period of hard exertion, of pushing and pulling the bits of ice, followed, and then:
"I'm thinking we'll make the channel, any way, before she comes by, and then we'll just hail her, and the happy bridegroom can come off if he's so moinded, being in the hurry that he is. 'Tain't many bridegrooms that makes all the haste he has to jine the lady."
Caius said nothing; the subject was too horrible.