haw, or across it when the night's
frost still crusted it beyond the weight of a man, searching for one
more squirrel, striving to achieve one more transmutation of furry leap
and scolding chatter into the lifts and tugs of a man's body that would
hoist the boat over the rim of shore-ice and slide it down into the
stream.

Not till the twentieth of May did the river break. The down-stream
movement began at five in the morning, and already were the days so
long that Daylight sat up and watched the ice-run. Elijah was too far
gone to be interested in the spectacle. Though vaguely conscious, he
lay without movement while the ice tore by, great cakes of it caroming
against the bank, uprooting trees, and gouging out earth by hundreds of
tons.

All about them the land shook and reeled from the shock of these
tremendous collisions. At the end of an hour the run stopped.
Somewhere below it was blocked by a jam. Then the river began to rise,
lifting the ice on its breast till it was higher than the bank. From
behind ever more water bore down, and ever more millions of tons of ice
added their weight to the congestion. The pressures and stresses became
terrific. Huge cakes of ice were squeezed out till they popped into
the air like melon seeds squeezed from between the thumb and forefinger
of a child, while all along the banks a wall of ice was forced up.
When the jam broke, the noise of grinding and smashing redoubled. For
another hour the run continued. The river fell rapidly. But the wall
of ice on top the bank, and extending down into the falling water,
remained.

The tail of the ice-run passed, and for the first time in six months
Daylight saw open water. He knew that the ice had not yet passed out
from the upper reaches of the Stewart, that it lay in packs and jams in
those upper reaches, and that it might break loose and come down in a
second run any time; but the need was too desperate for him to linger.
Elijah was so far gone that he might pass at any moment. As for
himself, he was not sure that enough strength remained in his wasted
muscles to launch the boat. It was all a gamble. If he waited for the
second ice-run, Elijah would surely die, and most probably himself. If
he succeeded in launching the boat, if he kept ahead of the second
ice-run, if he did not get caught by some of the runs from the upper
Yukon; if luck favored in all these essential particulars, as well as
in a score of minor ones, the