Suddenly he broke off and began humming, “Tum—te—tum—tum—tum.” He was going over and over that mad symphony. It appeared to give him strength and courage, and seizing the pick, he began hacking away at some object that lay half buried in the snow.
Fifteen minutes later he had exhumed a short, square raft.
“Built you for other purposes, but you’ll do for this,” he muttered. “Other logs where you came from.”
He set both sleds carefully upon the raft; then with yards upon yards of rawhide rope, lashed them solidly to it.
This done, he began running out a heavier rope. This he carried up the bank to a spot where there was a mass of jagged rock covered here and there by hard packed snow.
More than once he slipped, but always he struggled upward until at last he stood upon the topmost pinnacle. A heroic figure silhouetted in the moonlight, he stood for a full five minutes staring down at the racing waters below. Dancing in the moonlight, they appeared to reach out black hands to grasp and drag him down.
Before him, on the opposite side, gleamed a high white bank. A sheer precipice of ice fifty feet high, this was the end of a glacier that every now and again sent a thousand tons of ice thundering into the deep pool at its foot.
Beneath this ice barrier the water had worn a channel. A boat drifting down on the rushing waters would certainly be sucked down beneath this ice and be crushed like an eggshell.
What the old man intended to do was evident enough. He meant to set the raft, laden with the sleds and trappings so precious to his young guests, afloat in those turbulent waters and then to attempt by means of the rope to hold it from being drawn beneath the ice, and to guide it a half mile down the river to quieter waters below. There was no path for him to follow. Jagged rocks and ice-like snow, slippery as glass, awaited him; yet he dared to try it.
Here was a task fit for the youngest and the strongest; yet there he stood, the spirit of a hero flowing in his veins—age serving youth. The gallantry of a great and perfect gentleman bowing to fair ladies and daring all. How Marian would have thrilled at sight of this daring act.