"I landed on the spot I'd picked out. I can't complain of missing the mark, but instead of stopping there, I shot clear through and down into the water.
"Surprised? I was worse than that. I was dead scared. For a minute I thought I was going to rise under the ice and drown right there.
"How it happened I don't know; but I came up between the pans, and struck out for the one I'd left. I got to the pan, all right, and climbed aboard. There I was, on a little pan of ice, beyond reach of the floe and leaving the shore behind me, and cold and pretty well discouraged.
"There's the riddle of the corked bottle," said the trader, interrupting his narrative. "Now how do I happen to be sitting here?"
"I'm sure I can't tell," said the skipper.
"No more you should," said he, "for you don't know what I carried in my pack. But you see I had the bottle in my hands, and I wanted the ginger ale bad; so I thought fast and hard.
"It struck me that I might do something with my line and jigger.[4] Don't you see the chance the barbed steel hooks and the forty fathom of line gave me? When I thought of that jigger I felt just like the man who is told to push the cork in when he can't draw it out. I'd got back to the pan where I'd thrown down my pack, you know; so there was the jigger, right at hand.
"It was getting dark by this time—getting dark fast, and the pans were drifting farther and farther apart.
"It was easy to hook the jigger in the nearest pan and draw my pan over to it; for that pan was five times the weight of the one I was on. The one beyond was about the same size; they came together at the half-way point. Of course this took time. I could hardly see the shore then, and it struck me that I might not be able to find it at all, when I came near enough to cast my jigger for it.