Shorty turned on him.  “Oh, you’ll get yours as soon as I finish with your pardner, you little hog-wallopin’ snooper, you.”

“Sprague,” Kit said, “I’ll give you just thirty seconds to put away that gun and get that oar out.”

Sprague hesitated, gave a short hysterical laugh, put the revolver away, and bent his back to the work.

For two hours more, inch by inch, they fought their way along the edge of the foaming rocks, until Kit feared he had made a mistake.  And then, when on the verge of himself turning back, they came abreast of a narrow opening, not twenty feet wide, which led into a land-locked enclosure where the fiercest gusts scarcely flawed the surface.  It was the haven gained by the boats of previous days.  They landed on a shelving beach, and the two employers lay in collapse in the boat, while Kit and Shorty pitched the tent, built a fire, and started the cooking.

“What’s a hog-walloping snooper, Shorty?” Kit asked.

“Blamed if I know,” was the answer; “but he’s one just the same.”

The gale, which had been dying quickly, ceased at nightfall, and it came on clear and cold.  A cup of coffee, set aside to cool and forgotten, a few minutes later was found coated with half an inch of ice.  At eight o’clock, when Sprague and Stine, already rolled in their blankets, were sleeping the sleep of exhaustion, Kit came back from a look at the boat.

“It’s the freeze-up, Shorty,” he announced.  “There’s a skin of ice over the whole pond already.”

“What are you going to do?”

“There’s only one thing.  The lake of course freezes first.  The rapid current of the river may keep it open for days.  This time to-morrow any boat caught in Lake Labarge remains there until next year.”

“You mean we got to get out to-night?  Now?”

Kit nodded.

“Tumble out, you sleepers!” was Shorty’s answer, couched in a roar, as he began casting off the guy-ropes of the tent.

The other two awoke, groaning with the pain of stiffened muscles and the pain of rousing from the sleep of exhaustion.

“What time is it?” Stine asked.

“Half-past eight.”

“It’s dark yet,” was the objection.

Shorty jerked out a couple of guy-ropes, and the tent began to sag.

“It’s not morning,” he said.  “It’s evening.  Come on.  The lake’s freezin’.  We got to get acrost.”

Stine sat up, his face bitter and wrathful.  “Let it freeze.  We’re not going to stir.”

“All right,” said Shorty.  “We’re goin’ on with the boat.”

“You were engaged—­”

“To take your outfit to Dawson,” Shorty caught him up.  “Well, we’re takin’ it, ain’t we?” He punctuated his query by bringing half the tent down on top of them.

They broke their way through the thin ice in the little harbor, and came out on the lake, where the water, heavy and glassy, froze on their oars with every stroke.  The water soon became like mush, clogging the stroke of the oars and freezing in the air even as it dripped.  Later the surface began to form a skin, and the boat proceeded slower and slower.