choices and take the daring chances. But a good reason for
Grenfell's going first this time was that his picked team of young,
strong, spry dogs were hustlers, whom it would be impossible to hold
back, and the other dogs were heavier and slower.

Although Grenfell in the twenty miles before nightfall twice called a
halt, the slower team behind him was unable to catch up. He reached a
small hamlet and had given his eager dogs their supper of two fish
apiece, and was gathering the people together for prayers when the
second team overtook him.

In the night the weather changed. The wind began to blow from the
northeast; a fog set in, with rain. The snow became mushy, to make
hard going, and out in the bay the sea was ugly, with the water
heaving the ice-pans about. The plan for the coming day was to make a
run of forty miles, the first ten miles a short cut across a bay, over
the salt-water ice.

Grenfell did not want to get too far from his convoy, and so he let
the second team start on ahead, with a lead of two hours.

He told them just where to call a halt and wait for him. There was a
log hut, or "tilt," at the half-way point. Since there was no one
living on that part of the very lonely coast-line, this hut was a
refuge fitted out with anything that a shipwrecked mariner or a
benighted traveler by land might need--dry clothes, food, and
medicines.

"You go to the hut and wait there till I come," were the Doctor's
final orders.

The rain began to fall, and when Grenfell got under way it was such
treacherous going that he couldn't cut straight across the bay as he
wished, but had to keep closer to the land. The sea had risen in its
wrath and thrown the pans of ice about, so that there were wide spaces
between, and half a mile out from the shore it was clear water.

But far out from the shore there was an island, and by a daring series
of jumps across the cracks,--the dogs as buoyant as their master,
hauling the sled as though it were a load of feathers,--Grenfell
reached the island, and made the dogs rest--a hard thing to do--while
he looked about him to see where the next lap of the journey would
take him and them.

It was four miles, he knew, to a rocky headland over yonder, if he
ventured out on that uncertain field of ice. That would save several
miles over the more prudent course alongshore.

As far as he could see, the ice looked as though it would hold up the
sled. It was rough--but a hardened voyage