In frantic haste Dick aroused Sandy and shouted his plan into his dazed chum’s ears. Fumbling fingers then began the slow process of attaching snowshoes to tingling feet. At last the task was accomplished, and the boys began shuffling toward the thin ice.
Dick went first, skating as lightly as possible out on the ice. His heart was in his mouth. Would the ice hold?
The ice sprang downward slightly and tiny cracks spread out all around Dick, but the ice held.
“Don’t follow my track,” he cried to Sandy, about to leave the floe. “Start somewhere where the ice hasn’t been strained. We’ve got to hurry. This salt water may melt at any moment.”
Sandy did as he was told and there began a more perilous half mile of snowshoeing than the boys ever before had experienced or ever hoped to experience again.
Faster and faster they skated over the rubbery ice, praying they would strike no weaker spot, every nerve strained to the utmost in their fear-driven flight.
Under any other circumstances the boys would surely have fallen completely exhausted before they finished that terrible half mile of snowshoeing. But it was life or death, and all the reserve energy in their strong, young bodies came to the front to carry them through.
One last spurt of speed and they tumbled onto the heaps of solid ice marking the beach and solid land. Scarcely had they landed when the water broke through the rapidly melting ice.
Sandy could not raise himself and Dick had just enough strength left to drag himself to a standing position. His roving eyes fell upon a flock of eider ducks a little distance away. His stomach crying out for food, Dick reeled toward the wild fowl, scattering them to right and left. He found quickly what he was looking for. Eggs!
Pawing into a nest he rolled out three eggs, and without testing them to see whether they were fresh or not, he cracked the shells and drank down the life-giving nourishment. Hastily picking up two more eggs, he stumbled back to Sandy and forced him to suck the raw whites.