kon could rid
itself of the millions of tons of ice that cluttered its breast.

On the twelfth of May, carrying their sleeping-robes, a pail, an ax,
and the precious rifle, the two men started down the river on the ice.
Their plan was to gain to the cached poling-boat they had seen, so that
at the first open water they could launch it and drift with the stream
to Sixty Mile. In their weak condition, without food, the going was
slow and difficult. Elijah developed a habit of falling down and being
unable to rise. Daylight gave of his own strength to lift him to his
feet, whereupon the older man would stagger automatically on until he
stumbled and fell again.

On the day they should have reached the boat, Elijah collapsed utterly.
When Daylight raised him, he fell again. Daylight essayed to walk with
him, supporting him, but such was Daylight's own weakness that they
fell together.

Dragging Elijah to the bank, a rude camp was made, and Daylight started
out in search of squirrels. It was at this time that he likewise
developed the falling habit. In the evening he found his first
squirrel, but darkness came on without his getting a certain shot.
With primitive patience he waited till next day, and then, within the
hour, the squirrel was his.

The major portion he fed to Elijah, reserving for himself the tougher
parts and the bones. But such is the chemistry of life, that this
small creature, this trifle of meat that moved, by being eaten,
transmuted to the meat of the men the same power to move. No longer
did the squirrel run up spruce trees, leap from branch to branch, or
cling chattering to giddy perches. Instead, the same energy that had
done these things flowed into the wasted muscles and reeling wills of
the men, making them move--nay, moving them--till they tottered the
several intervening miles to the cached boat, underneath which they
fell together and lay motionless a long time.

Light as the task would have been for a strong man to lower the small
boat to the ground, it took Daylight hours. And many hours more, day
by day, he dragged himself around it, lying on his side to calk the
gaping seams with moss. Yet, when this was done, the river still held.
Its ice had risen many feet, but would not start down-stream. And one
more task waited, the launching of the boat when the river ran water to
receive it. Vainly Daylight staggered and stumbled and fell and crept
through the snow that was wet with t