Dropping the toy canoe in the snow channel, he moved it along until it was abreast the skin boat. Then both boats overtook the raft.
“That’s plain enough,” the boy told himself. “We are to get into a boat and pursue them. We will overtake my friends. Then together we will overhaul Timmie and his raft load of dogs and green gold. Only question is, where’s our boat?”
As if understanding the question, the hunchback laid heavy hands upon him, turned him half about and marched him down the river.
CHAPTER XXVI
INTO THE ICE JAMB
“Ah!” sighed Gordon Duncan, as once more they caught sight of Timmie’s raft. “We shall be up with him soon. Once we are close, when he sees my face he will know it is I, his friend Gordon Duncan. We will bring him and his treasure to the outside world. His last days shall be happy ones after all.”
“But look!” exclaimed the girl, gripping his arm.
One look, and he started to his feet. The white-haired man before them appeared to leap and dance upon the water. Appearances were deceiving. The raft leaped and danced over rapids. And mingled with the rapids were broken fragments and great heaps of ice. Here the water boiled and foamed, there it rushed like mad.
“We shall all be drowned!” said the girl, gripping the old man’s arm.
“Trust God,” the man murmured. “I only fear for Timmie.”
Then, of a sudden, things happened. They had been coming nearer and nearer to the clumsy raft when, as they turned a sharp bend in the river, they saw that the aged recluse faced disaster. Stretching all the way across the river was ice piled forty feet high. Jambing, screeching, rolling and tumbling, it threatened all life that came near. And there was the white haired recluse headed straight for it.