“Right-o,” said Joe as he turned to urge his dogs forward.
It was hard on Joe, this urging of his faithful four forward over the difficult trail.
“’Twouldn’t be so bad,” he told them, “if I wasn’t driving you straight on to your own destruction. To think that after all this struggle your reward is being eaten by some starving explorers. That’s what breaks my heart.”
“Ho, well,” he sighed as he climbed a tumbled pile of ice fragments, “there may be a way out yet.”
Night came on, and still by the light of the moon they fought their way forward. Every moment counted. Their own lives as well as the lives of those they sought to rescue were at stake.
Only when the dogs, completely exhausted, lay down in the traces and howled piteously, begging for rest and food, did they pause and seek a camping place for the night.
A broad cake of ice some hundred yards wide from edge to edge was chosen. In the center of this they pitched their tent. No Arctic feathers for them that night, only the hard surface of the ice. But even such a bed as this was welcome after a day of heroic toil.
When the dogs had been fed and they had eaten their own supper they set up the radiophone, and braving the danger of being detected by the outlaw, sought to get into communication with the exploring party.
“Got to find out whether we are going right,” Joe explained.
In a surprisingly short time they received an answer and were cheered by the news that their course was correct, and that they were at this moment not more than seventy-five miles from the explorers. With good luck, did not the ice floe begin to shift, they might almost hope to meet the men they sought at the evening of the next day and to relieve them of their suffering from hunger.