Coming down the river like a great tidal wave they could see a chaotic front of blue water and glistening bergs advancing swiftly and surely.  At its approach the huge slabs of ice in the river were forced upwards, and shivered into all manner of fanciful shapes.  It was the dammed-up current of the mighty river which at length had forced the barrier of ice, and carried all in front of it, as the mortar carries the shell.  There was one continuous, deafening roar, punctuated with a series of violent explosions as huge blocks of ice were shivered and shot into the air by that Titanic force.  Nothing on earth could live in that wild maelstrom.  It was one vast, pulsating, churning mass, and as the sun caught its irregular, crystal-like crest, a lawn-like mist, that glowed with every colour of the rainbow, hovered over it.  It was indeed a wondrously beautiful, but awe-inspiring spectacle.

But the most terrible feature of the scene was the human life that was about to be sacrificed in that fierce flood.  The murderous members of Big Bear’s band who had followed them up, led away against their better judgment by the sight of their human prey, had advanced farther over the ice than they imagined, so that, when checked by the deliberate and careful shooting of Rory and Child-of-Light, they remained where they were instead of either rushing on or beating a precipitate retreat.  Thus thirty of them realised that they were caught as in a trap.  They saw the towering bulk of that pitiless wave coming swiftly towards them, and then they ran, panic-stricken, some this way and some that.  They ran as only men run when fleeing for their lives.

“It is too horrible!” cried the girl, turning away from the gruesomeness of the spectacle.

The Indians had flung their rifles from them and were scattering in all directions over the ice, but that gleaming wave, that Juggernaut of grinding bergs, was swifter than they, and bore down upon them at the speed of a racehorse.  It shot them into the air like so many playthings, caught them up again, and bore them away in its ravenous maw like the insatiable Moloch that it was.  In another minute there was neither sign nor trace of them.

And now the party drew together to compare notes, and to deliberate upon their future movements.  Whatever was said by Douglas to Pasmore about the sacrifice he had made on his behalf none of the party knew, for the rancher did not speak about it again, nor did the Police sergeant ever refer to it.

What they were going to do now was the matter that gave them most concern.  They could not go on, and to go back meant running into Poundmaker’s marauding hordes.  They came to the conclusion that the best thing they could do was to camp where they were.  They therefore drove the sleighs over to a sunny, wooded slope that was now clear of snow, and pitched Dorothy’s tent in lee of the cotton-wood trees.  The air was wonderfully mild, a soft chinook wind was blowing, and the snow was disappearing from the high ground as if by magic.