“What?” questioned Rod.

“That it’s swans!” he completed.

“Swans!” cried the young hunter.  “Great Scott, do you mean to say there could be enough swans—­”

“They sometimes cover the lake in thousands,” said Wabi.  “I have seen them whitening the water as far as one could see.”

“More swan as you count in twent’ t’ous’nd year!” affirmed Mukoki.  After a few moments he added, “Them no swan.  Ice!”

There was an unpleasant ring in his voice as he spoke the last word, and though Rod did not fully understand what significance the discovery held for them he could not but observe that it occasioned both of his comrades considerable anxiety.  The cause was not long in doubt.  Another half hour of brisk paddling brought them to the edge of a frozen field of ice that extended for a quarter of a mile from the shore.  In both directions it stretched beyond their vision.  Wabi’s face was filled with dismay.  Mukoki sat with his paddle across his knees, uttering not a sound.

“What’s the matter?” asked Rod.  “Can’t we make it?”

“Make it!” exclaimed Wabigoon.  “Yes—­perhaps to-morrow, or the next day!”

“Do you mean to say we can’t get over that ice?”

“That’s just exactly the predicament we are in.  The edge of that ice is rotten.”

The canoe had drifted alongside the ice, and Rod began pounding it with his paddle.  For a distance of two feet it broke off in chunks, then became more firm.

“I believe that if we cut our way in for a canoe length or so it would hold us,” he declared.

Wabi reached for an ax.

“We’ll try it!”

Mukoki shook his head.

But for a second time that day Wabigoon persisted in acting against the old pathfinder’s judgment, something that Rod had never known him to be guilty of before.  Foot by foot he broke the ice ahead of the canoe, until the frail craft had thrust its length into the rotten field.  Then, steadying himself on the bow, he stepped out cautiously upon the ice.

“There!” he cried triumphantly.  “You next, Rod!  Steady!”

In a moment Rod had joined him.  What happened after that seemed to pass like a terrible nightmare.  First there came a light cracking in the ice under their feet, but it was over in an instant.  Wabi was laughing at him for the fear that had come into his face, and calling his name, when with a thunderous, crash the whole mass gave way under them, and they plunged down into the black depths of the lake.  The last that Rod saw was his friend’s horror-stricken face sinking in the crumbling ice; he heard a sharp, terrible cry from Mukoki, and then he knew that the cold waters had engulfed him, and that he was battling for his life under the surface.

Fiercely he struck out with arms and legs in an effort to rise, and in that moment of terror he thought of the great sheet of ice.  What if he should come up under it?  In which direction should he strike out?  He opened his eyes but all was a black chaos about him.  The seconds seemed like ages.  There came a splitting, rending sensation in his head, an almost overpowering desire to open his mouth, to gasp, gasp for air where there was nothing but death!  Then his head struck something.  It was the ice!  He had come up under the ice, and there was but one end to that!