It was a laborious climb, and several times he slid back to the place of starting, but each mishap of this kind only made him the more determined to gain the top.

At length, breathless and bruised, crawling on hands and knees, he reached a point from which he could look beyond the barrier.

As he did so, he turned sick and uttered a choking cry.
[Illustration: He reached a point from which he could look beyond the barrier.] What he saw in that first glance was so utterly incredible that it could not be true, though if it were it would be the most welcome and beautiful sight in all the world.

Yet it was only a ship! Just one ship and a lot of men! The ship was not even a handsome one, being merely a three-masted steam sealer, greasy and smeared in every part with coal soot from her tall smoke stack.

She lay a mile or so away, but well within the pack, through the outer edge of which she had forced a passage.