roach, and instantly his anger blazed afresh. He
decided that the latter had been telling the story of their experience
on the pass and boasting of his service. So much the better, he thought,
in a blind rage; that which he planned doing would appear all the more
like an accident, for who would dream that a man could kill the person
to whom he owed his life?

That night he waited for a chance.

They were camped in a dismal hut on a wind-swept shore; they were alone.
But Grant was waiting also, it seemed. They lay down beside each other,
ostensibly to sleep; their limbs touched; the warmth from their bodies
intermingled, but they did not close their eyes.

They were up and away early, with Nome drawing rapidly nearer. They had
skirted an ocean, foot by foot; Bering Sea lay behind them, now, and its
northern shore swung westward to their goal. For two months they had
lived in silent animosity, feeding on bitter food while their elbows
rubbed.

Noon found them floundering through one of those unheralded storms which
make coast travel so hazardous. The morning had turned off gray, the sky
was of a leaden hue which blended perfectly with the snow underfoot,
there was no horizon, it was impossible to see more than a few yards in
any direction. The trail soon became obliterated and their eyes began to
play tricks. For all they could distinguish, they might have been
suspended in space; they seemed to be treading the measures of an
endless dance in the center of a whirling cloud. Of course it was cold,
for the wind off the open sea was damp, but they were not men to turn
back.

They soon discovered that their difficulty lay not in facing the storm,
but in holding to the trail. That narrow, two-foot causeway, packed by a
winter's travel and frozen into a ribbon of ice by a winter's frosts,
afforded their only avenue of progress, for the moment they left it the
sled plowed into the loose snow, well-nigh disappearing and bringing the
dogs to a standstill. It was the duty of the driver, in such case, to
wallow forward, right the load if necessary, and lift it back into
place. These mishaps were forever occurring, for it was impossible to
distinguish the trail beneath its soft covering. However, if the
driver's task was hard it was no more trying than that of the man ahead,
who was compelled to feel out and explore the ridge of hardened snow and
ice with his feet, after the fashion of a man walking a plank in the
dark. Frequen