The shore was now only a dim line to the south, while around rose and fell the icy waves of the desolate polar sea. Here and there a berg wallowed along and occasionally they collided with a slower moving body of ice. Dick thought of jumping off the floe to one of the bergs, but changed his mind since the faster moving floe might possibly run into land while the loggy iceberg would float in almost the same place for days.
Adding to the danger of their situation, the sky was becoming overcast by a film of gray clouds and a freezing wind was springing up, heightening the waves and throwing icy cold spray across the floe.
“We’re in for a storm, Sandy,” Dick said, beating his arms against his body to keep warm. “It’s up to us to fix up some sort of wind break or else we can’t stand the cold. Think we can chop some cakes of ice out of this floe?”
“We sure can try,” responded Sandy, drawing out his sheath knife with alacrity.
Both boys then set to work industriously and after considerable hard labor, succeeded in chipping out some good sized chunks of ice. These they built up in a half circle, rounded against the wind. Against the wall they flung water with their mittens. The water quickly froze, cementing the blocks together and forming an effective wind break. Behind this they hovered while the wind increased in velocity and a heavy snow began to fall.
They dared not sleep for fear they would freeze before they awoke, and though the dread drowsiness that is the first symptom of freezing stole over them again and again, they fought it off grimly. Once both fell asleep at the same time in spite of all they could do, but the fast moving floe struck a large berg with a grinding, rending crash and startled them to the temporary safety of wakefulness. Had it not been for the wind break they had erected they would undoubtedly have frozen to death. As it was, they were forced to watch each other, to prevent sleep coming to both at the same time. Sometimes Dick pounded Sandy until his eyes opened, and again Sandy beat and shouted at Dick above the roar of the storm, and the crashing and grinding of ice.
Neither had the least idea where they were being driven to, they had even lost all sense of direction, every effort bent on keeping a spark of life burning in their numb bodies.
It seemed to the boys that the battle with the cold would never end, that they had floated in the storm for hours, when suddenly the floe came to a jarring stop, and a deluge of ice water rolled across it, almost washing Dick and Sandy from their position under the wind break.
“I wonder what we’ve hit!” Dick shouted hoarsely.
“It must be a berg,” Sandy cried in reply.