The storm, as Peter predicted, had not reached its height.  Each smothering blast of fury was stronger and fiercer than the one before it.  Andy took advantage of the lulls, and save when the heavier blasts came and nearly swept him from his feet, maintained a steady trot.  In the swirl of snow-clouds he could see nothing a foot from his nose.  Once he found himself floundering through pressure ridges formed by the tide near shore.  This he calculated was the tip of a long point jutting out into the Bay, half-way between The Jug and the Post.  Ten miles of the distance was behind him.  He drew farther out upon the ice.

There were times when Andy had to throw himself prone upon the ice with his face down and sheltered by his arms to escape suffocation.

“‘Tis gettin’ wonderful nasty,” he said, “but I’ll have plenty o’ grit, like Jamie says, and with the Lord’s help I’ll pull through.”

Then he found himself repeating over and over again the prayer: 

“Dear Lord, help me through!  ’Tis to save a life, and the scout oath!  Dear Lord, help me through!”

The gale had now risen to such terrific proportions that often he was compelled to crawl upon his hands and knees.  With each momentary lull he would rise and stagger forward.  His legs worked at these times without conscious effort.  It was strange his legs should be like that.  They had never felt like that before.

And so, crawling, staggering upright, crawling again, and lying for minutes at a time with his face in his arms that he might breathe when he was well-nigh overwhelmed and suffocated, Andy kept on.

He could recall little of the last hours on the ice.  It was a confused sensation of rising and falling, staggering and crawling until he collided with an obstruction, and recognizing it as the jetty at the Post, his brain roused to a degree of consciousness, and his heart leaped with joy.

With much fumbling he succeeded in donning his snow-shoes, which were slung upon his back, for the twenty yards that lay between the ice and the buildings was covered with deep drift.  Once he stepped upon a dog that lay huddled and sleeping under the drift.  It sprang out with a snarl and snapped at his legs.  A hundred of the savage creatures were lying about in the snow.

Day comes late in Labrador.  It was still pitchy dark outside when Andy, at eight o’clock in the morning, lurched into the kitchen at the Post house, and fell sprawling upon the floor.  He had been battling the storm for ten hours.

David and Margaret, Eli and Mark and several others were there.  Doctor Joe was at breakfast in the Factor’s quarters, and they called him.  Andy’s face was covered with a mass of caked snow and ice.  His nose and cheeks and chin were white and badly frosted, and upon removing his mittens and moccasins, his hands and feet were found to be in the same condition.

Mr. MacCreary, the factor, placed a bed at Doctor Joe’s disposal, and when the frost had been removed and circulation had been restored, Andy was tucked into warm blankets.