CHAPTER IX.
"GOD'S PUPPETS, BEST AND WORST." All that long day a hot sun beat down upon the sea and upon the ice in the bay; and the tide, with its gentle motion of flow and ebb, made visibly more stir among the cakes of floating ice, by which it was seen that they were smaller and lighter than before.

The sun-rays were doing their work, not so much by direct touch upon the ice itself as by raising the temperature of all the flowing sea, and thus, when the sun went down and the night of frost set in, the melting of the ice did not cease.
Morning came, and revealed a long blue channel across the bay from its entrance to Harbour Island.

The steamer from Souris had made this channel by knocking aside the light ice with her prow.

She was built to travel in ice.

She lay now, with funnel still smoking, in the harbour, a quarter of a mile from the small quay.