So they pushed the dogs back to the sena at the fastest gait to which they could urge them.  Skipper Ed and Jimmy were in advance and had Skipper Ed’s komatik loaded with the larger proportion of the remaining seals, and were lashing the load into place, when Bobby arrived.

“I’ve got a heavier load than yours will be, so I’ll go on with it,” Skipper Ed shouted as Bobby drove up.  “There are only two small ones left for you, and the cooking outfit and your snow knives in the igloo.  Don’t forget them.  You and Jimmy will likely overtake me.  Hurry along.”

“All right,” answered Bobby.  “We’ll catch you before you reach smooth ice.”

So Skipper Ed drove away with never a thought of catastrophe, and was quickly swallowed up by the thickening snow, while Bobby and Jimmy loaded the seals and the things from the igloo upon the sledge, and, spurred by the rising wind and snow, hurried with all their might.

Already great seas were booming and breaking with a roar upon the ice, and as the boys turned the dogs back upon the trail they observed a waving motion of the ice beneath them, which was rapidly becoming more apparent.  At one moment the dogs would be hauling the sledge up an incline, and at the next moment the sledge would be coasting down another incline close upon the heels of the team, as the heaving ice assumed the motion of the seas which rolled beneath.

As they receded from the ice edge, however, this motion diminished, until finally it was hardly perceptible at all, and there seemed no further cause for alarm or great speed, and the dogs, which were weary with the two days’ heavy hauling, were permitted to proceed at their own leisurely gait.

At length through the snow they saw Skipper Ed waiting for them, but when he was assured they were following he proceeded.

“Ah!” Bobby shouted to his dogs a moment later, bringing them suddenly to a stop.  “I’ve dropped my whip somewhere.  Jimmy, watch the team while I run back after it.”

Twenty minutes elapsed before he returned with the whip, and they drove on.

Skipper Ed, satisfied that Bobby and Jimmy were close at his heels, did not halt again until well out over the smooth ice and near to Itigailit Island, when he heard behind him a strange rumbling and crackling.  He halted and listened, and strained his eyes through the drifting snow for a glimpse of the boys.  They were not visible, and, springing from his komatik, he ran back in the direction from which he had come and as fast as he could run, and presently, with a sickening sensation at his heart, was brought to a halt by a broad black space of open water.

The great ice pack upon which they had been hunting had broken loose from the shore ice, and tide and wind were driving it seaward.  Already the chasm between him and the floe had widened to over thirty feet, and it was rapidly growing wider.  The minutes dragged and when at last Bobby and Jimmy came into view on the opposite side of the chasm it was a full two hundred feet in breadth.  They shouted to the dogs and rushed to the edge of the open water, but there was no hope of their escape.  They had delayed too long.  They were adrift on the ice floe, which was steadily taking them seaward.