It did not take Sandy long to tell Dick and Toma how he had been captured by two scouts of Govereau’s band, who had lain in hiding, looking for a chance to attack. It had been their approach and the appearance of a herd of caribou going south that had frightened away the wolves. Dick had been right in suspecting that Sandy had walked in his sleep. It was almost funny to hear him tell how he had awakened, struggling in the hands of his captors, dreaming they were wolves devouring him.
At dawn the travelers reached the shores of a large lake, whose snow covered ice stretched for leagues and leagues ahead.
“Him Badge Lake,” Toma told them. “We cross um ice, make journey shorter.”
They stopped long enough to steep coffee and make some flapjacks. Dick and Toma had taken very few provisions with them when they left Gaston Leroi, and they now could see that they would have barely enough for another meal.
Still hungry, they set off across the frozen lake with many a backward glance to see if they were followed. But if they were, they saw no sign of Govereau’s band. The silent forest, fading from view as they forged out farther and farther over the ice, disclosed no running figures on their trail.
“We cross um lake when sun set,” Toma said. “Maybe see moose when other side. We eat then.”
It was a long jaunt across the lake. At noon they could see the other shore, dim and hazy to the south. With hunger gnawing at their vitals they trudged the last miles across the ice, hearing now and again, a low rumbling roar as the lake ice cracked open for hundreds and hundreds of yards. Once they were held up by one of these cracks, wider than the rest, which they could not leap over. They had to follow this until it grew narrower. Sandy slipped when they finally jumped the crack, and fell into the niche. At the bottom the fissure came together, and was partly filled with slivers of ice. Dick and Toma pulled Sandy out on the end of a rifle.
Darkness was just falling when they reached the other shore of the lake. It was with groans of thankfulness that they built a fire and dropped down to rest for the night.
“I’m all in,” Sandy sank upon his back by the fire.
“I couldn’t have gone much further,” Dick admitted.