In the pauses we waited; started again whenever there was a good bridge of ice; paused again when we came to naked water and waited in distress until a floating vast cake should bridge that place.

It took us an hour to make the trip--a trip which we made in a misery of apprehension all the time.

But at last we arrived within a very brief distance of the shore.

We waited again; there was another place that needed bridging.

All about us the ice was plunging and grinding along and piling itself up in mountains on the shore, and the dangers were increasing, not diminishing.