ilent for a long while, sometimes
talking, the time passed. The land faded upon the horizon and was lost.
Icebergs lay about them. Once they were startled by the thunderous roar
of a monster berg in the distance as it toppled and turned upon its
side, and later they felt its swell. Not far away a whale spouted.

Finally the sun set, and the wind died, and for a little while the
heavens and icebergs and sea were marvelously and gloriously painted
with crimson and purple and orange.

Then came the long gray twilight of the North, and at last the stars,
and night, and darkness, with the icebergs, white, spectral, and coldly
majestic, rising in silhouette against the distant sky, and the
throbbing, restless sea, somber and black, around them.

CHAPTER XIII

HOW THE "GOOD AND SURE" BROUGHT TROUBLE

The two or three hours of the midsummer Labrador night were long hours
for Bobby and Jimmy--the longest hours they had ever experienced. At
intervals, guiding their course by the stars, they paddled, and this
drove away the deadening chill that threatened to overcome them.

But at last dawn came, and with the growing light the sense of
helplessness which had enveloped them during the period of darkness fell
away, and to some extent Bobby's confidence, hopefulness, and buoyancy
of spirits returned, and he rallied Jimmy, also, into a better frame of
mind.

"Hurrah!" shouted Bobby, at length. "See there, Jimmy!"

And Jimmy, looking, saw upon the western horizon a long, gray line.

"Why, there's the land!" he exclaimed.

"Isn't it great to see it again!" said Bobby.

"Let's paddle hard, and see if we can't make it. The tide's been
drifting us in, and the paddling we've done in the night has been
helping."

"It didn't seem to, but it must have," agreed Jimmy, working as hard as
he could with his short paddle. "The exercise kept me warm, and that's
about the only good I thought it was doing, but it did help, didn't it?"

"It certainly did," agreed Bobby. "My, but I'm hungry!"

"So am I," said Jimmy. "Won't the sun feel good when it rises?"

"I wonder which way we lie from home?"

"South, of course, for that's the drift of the current. All the bergs
drift south."

"Yes, but how far?"

"Oh, I don't know, but we must be some bit south of the island."

And so they calculated and chatted, while the glow grew in the eastern
sky, and until the sun rose, at last, to comfort them and warm stiffened
fingers and chi