Now the drawbridge took a sudden drop of a foot. Hope rose. Then, again, it appeared wedged solidly in place. It did not move. The channel widened a foot, two feet, three. Hope seemed vain.
But now came a sudden tide tremor across the floe. With a crunching sound the massive cake toppled and fell.
The boy was on his feet in an instant. The chasm was bridged. But the cake had broken in two. Could he make it?
Calling to his dog, he leaped upon the slippery surface. An ever-widening river of water flowed where the cake had split. With one wild bound, he cleared it. The dog followed. In another moment they were safe on the other side.
"That's well over with," the boy sighed, patting the old dog on the head. "Now the question is, how can we find our friends?"
That, indeed, was a problem. They had covered considerable ground. The ice had been shifting. To pick up their back trail seemed impossible. An hour's search convinced him that it could not be done. He sat down in a brown study. He could not go away and leave these girls to drift north and perish, yet further search seemed futile.
Just as he was about to despair, Rover began to bark in the distance. Following the sound, he came to where the dog was apparently barking at nothing. But as the boy approached, the dog shot away over the ice.
"A trail!" he muttered, following on.
The ice was hard and smooth. A soft skin "muckluck" would leave no mark. Even the hard toes of a white bear would not scratch it.
When the boy had followed for a half-hour, he thought of these things, and paused to consider. What if he were following the meandering trail of a lumbering white bear? And if it happened to be a trail of a human being, was it his own trail, that of the girls, or of the bearded miner and his guide?