Just as he was ready to start a blizzard set in with a northeast gale,
and smash! went the ice. This put an end to dog travel. There was but
one alternative, and that was by boat. Traveling along the coast in a
small boat is pretty exciting and sometimes perilous when you have to
navigate the boat through narrow lanes of water, with land ice on one
side and the big Arctic ice pack on the other, and a shift of wind is
likely to send the pack driving in upon you before you can get out of
the way. And if the ice pack catches you, that's the end of it, for
your boat will be ground up like a grain of wheat between mill stones,
and there you are, stranded upon the ice, and as like as not cut off
from land, too.
But there was no other way to get to that meeting in New York, and
Grenfell was determined to get there. And so, when the blizzard had
passed he got out a small motor boat, and made ready for the journey.
If he could reach a point several days' journey by boat to the
southward, he could leave the boat and travel one hundred miles on
foot overland to the railroad.
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