“Chop ice,” he said, handing Sprague the hatchet.

“But what’s the use?” the other whined.  “We can’t make it.  We’re going to turn back.”

“We’re going on,” said Shorty.  “Chop ice.  An’ when you feel better you can spell me.”

It was heart-breaking toil, but they gained the shore, only to find it composed of surge-beaten rocks and cliffs, with no place to land.

“I told you so,” Sprague whimpered.

“You never peeped,” Shorty answered.

“We’re going back.”

Nobody spoke, and Kit held the boat into the seas as they skirted the forbidding shore.  Sometimes they gained no more than a foot to the stroke, and there were times when two or three strokes no more than enabled them to hold their own.  He did his best to hearten the two weaklings.  He pointed out that the boats which had won to this shore had never come back.  Perforce, he argued, they had found a shelter somewhere ahead.  Another hour they labored, and a second.

“If you fellows’d put into your oars some of that coffee you swig in your blankets, we’d make it,” was Shorty’s encouragement.  “You’re just goin’ through the motions an’ not pullin’ a pound.”

A few minutes later, Sprague drew in his oar.

“I’m finished,” he said, and there were tears in his voice.

“So are the rest of us,” Kit answered, himself ready to cry or to commit murder, so great was his exhaustion.  “But we’re going on just the same.”

“We’re going back.  Turn the boat around.”

“Shorty, if he won’t pull, take that oar yourself,” Kit commanded.

“Sure,” was the answer.  “He can chop ice.”

But Sprague refused to give over the oar; Stine had ceased rowing, and the boat was drifting backward.

“Turn around, Smoke,” Sprague ordered.

And Kit, who never in his life had cursed any man, astonished himself.

“I’ll see you in hell, first,” he replied.  “Take hold of that oar and pull.”

It is in moments of exhaustion that men lose all their reserves of civilization, and such a moment had come.  Each man had reached the breaking-point.  Sprague jerked off a mitten, drew his revolver, and turned it on his steersman.  This was a new experience to Kit.  He had never had a gun presented at him in his life.  And now, to his surprise, it seemed to mean nothing at all.  It was the most natural thing in the world.

“If you don’t put that gun up,” he said, “I’ll take it away and rap you over the knuckles with it.”

“If you don’t turn the boat around, I’ll shoot you,” Sprague threatened.

Then Shorty took a hand.  He ceased chopping ice and stood up behind Sprague.

“Go on an’ shoot,” said Shorty, wiggling the hatchet.  “I’m just aching for a chance to brain you.  Go on an’ start the festivities.”

“This is mutiny,” Stine broke in.  “You were engaged to obey orders.”