Bravely they struck out. Now they crossed a broad, level pan and now climbed a gigantic pile of bowlder-like fragments that rolled and slipped at their every move, threatening to send them crashing to the surface of the ice-pans or to submerge them in the deep, open pool of stinging water that lay at its base.
Exercising every precaution, the boy made his way slowly forward. More than once he paused to wait for the dog, time after time lifting him over a dangerous crevice or assisting him in climbing a particularly difficult barrier.
"I know you'd help me if you could," he said with a smile as he moistened his cracked lips, "so if we go down, we go together."
Time after time, dizzy-headed and faint, he sat down to rest, only to rise after a moment and struggle on again. At times, too, he was obliged to shake himself free from the spells of drowsiness which the chill wind and brisk Arctic air threw over him.
"We—we'll make it, old boy. We—we'll make it," he repeated over and over.
Little by little the landscape broadened before them. The bit of rugged shore line which lay there like a vision might be a point of land on the continent of North America or of Asia. Then again it might be the side of an island. Phi thought of this in a vague sort of way. His chief desire to put foot once more on something that did not drift with wind and tide, he bent every effort to making the goal.
At last, after what seemed days of struggle, he stood within a quarter of a mile of the shore.
The ice was piling on that shore, a scene of disordered grandeur beyond description. It was as if the streets of a city, six or eight feet in thickness and solid as marble, should suddenly begin to rise, to buckle, to glide length upon length in wild confusion. For some time the boy and the dog stood upon the last broad pan that did not pile and, lost in speechless wonder, viewed that marvel of nature with the eyes of unconcerned spectators.
At last the boy shook himself free from the charm. "Rover," there was awe in his tone, "do you know what we must do? We must cross that and reach that shore before the wind shifts or we are lost."
As if understanding his meaning, the dog lifted his nose in air and song, the dismal song known only to the sled dog of the Arctic.