Finally the looked for happened.  One afternoon a heavy bank of clouds, black and ominous, appeared in the western sky.  A light puff of wind presaged the blow that was to follow, and in a little while the gale was on.

The Maid of the North, it will be understood, lay in bay ice, and all the ice to the south of her was bay ice.  This was much lighter than that coming from more northerly points, and when the open sea which skirted the western edge of the field began to rise and sweep in upon this rotten ice the waves crumbled and crumpled it up before their mighty force like a piece of cardboard.  It was a time of the most intense anxiety for the three men.

Just at dusk, amid the roar of wind and smashing ice, the vessel gave a lurch, and suddenly she was free.  Fortunately her rudder was not carried away, as they had feared it would be, and when she answered the helm, Bob whispered,

“Thank th’ Lard.”

They were at the mercy of the wind during the next few hours, and there was little that could be done to help themselves until towards morning, when the gale subsided.  Then, with daylight, under short sail they began working the vessel out of the “slob” ice that surrounded it, and before dark that night were in the open sea, with now only a moderate breeze blowing, which fortunately had shifted to the northward.

Here they found themselves beset by a new peril.  Icebergs, great, towering, fearsome masses, lay all about them, and to make matters worse a thick gray fog settled over the ocean, obscuring everything ten fathoms distant.  They brought the vessel about and lay to in the wind, but even then drifted dangerously near one towering ice mass, and once a berg that could not have been half a mile away turned over with a terrifying roar.  It seemed as though a collision was inevitable before daylight, but the night passed without mishap, and when the morning sun lifted the fog the ship was still unharmed.

There was no land anywhere to be seen.  What position they were in Bob did not know, and had no way of finding out.  He did know, however, that somewhere to the westward lay the Labrador coast, and this they must try to reach.

Fortunately he could read the compass, and by its aid took as nearly as possible a due westerly course.

Alutook and Netseksoak, expert as they were in the handling of kayaks, had no knowledge of the management of larger craft like the Maid of the North, and without question accepted Bob as commander and followed his directions implicitly and faithfully; and he handled the vessel well, for he was a good sailor, as all lads of the Labrador are.

They made excellent headway, and were favoured with a season of good weather, and like the barometer Bob’s spirits rose.  But he dared to plan nothing beyond the present action.  A hundred times he had planned and pictured the home-coming, but each time Fate, or the will of a Providence that he could not understand, had intervened, and with the crushing of each new hope and the wiping out of each delightful picture that his imagination drew, he decided to look not into the future, but do his best in the present and trust to Providence for the rest, for, as he expressed it,