At length they reached the opposite shore, fighting against the gale
at every step. Now there was a hill to cross.
Here on the lee side of the hill they met mighty drifts of feathery
snow into which the dogs wallowed to their backs and the snowshoes of
the men sunk deep. They were compelled to haul on the traces with the
dogs. They had to lift and manipulate the sledges with tremendous
effort. Up the grade they toiled and strained, yard by yard, foot by
foot. Sometimes it seemed to them they were making no appreciable
progress, but on they fought through the black night and the driving
snow, sweating in spite of the Arctic blasts and clouds of drift that
sometimes nearly stopped their breath and carried them off their feet.
The life of the young fisherman's wife at Cape Norman hung in the
balance. The toiling men visualized her lying on a bed of pain and
perhaps dying for the need of a doctor. They saw the agonized husband
by her side, tortured by his helplessness to save her. They forgot
themselves and the risk they were taking in their desire to bring to
the fisherman's wife the help her husband was beseeching God to send.
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