Five minutes later
they were lost to sight amid the frozen chaos.
"Wal," soliloquized the man left standing on shore, "Ah 'opes they'll
make it, but it's a fearsome resk, an' Gawd 'elp 'em if come a shift o'
wind afore they're over."
Nothing, in all their previous experience of Labrador travel, had
equalled the tumultuous ruggedness of the way by which Cabot and White
were now attempting to bridge that boisterous arm of the stormy
northern ocean, and to advance at all taxed their strength to the
utmost. To transport their laden sled was next to impossible, but they
dared not leave it behind, and with their progress thus impeded they
were barely half way to the Newfoundland coast when night overtook
them. Even though the gathering darkness had not compelled a halt,
their utter exhaustion would have demanded a rest. For an hour White
had been obliged to clinch his teeth to keep from crying out with the
pain of his weakened, and now overstrained, ankle, and when Cabot
announced that it was no use trying to get further before morning, he
sank to the ice with a groan.
Full of sympathy for his comrade's suffering, the Yankee lad at once
set to work to make him as comfortable as circumstances would permit,
and soon had him lying on a sleeping bag, in a niche formed by two
uptilted slabs of ice. Profiting by past experience, they had procured
and brought with them an Eskimo lamp with its moss wick, a small
quantity of seal oil, and a supply of matches, so that, after a while,
Cabot procured enough boiling water to furnish a small pot of tea.
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