The light wind blew past their faces, and the Gaspe schooner was seen to sail up the path which the steamer had made across the bay.
"The wind's in the very chink that makes her able to take the channel.
I'm thinking she'll be getting in before us." O'Shea spoke with the gay indifference of one who had staked nothing on the hope of getting to the harbour first; but Caius wondered if this short cut would have been undertaken without strong reason.
A short period of hard exertion, of pushing and pulling the bits of ice, followed, and then: "I'm thinking we'll make the channel, any way, before she comes by, and then we'll just hail her, and the happy bridegroom can come off if he's so moinded, being in the hurry that he is.

'Tain't many bridegrooms that makes all the haste he has to jine the lady." Caius said nothing; the subject was too horrible.
"Ye and yer bags could jist go on board the ship before the loving husband came off; ye'd make the harbour that way as easy, and I'm thinking the ice on the other side of the bay is that thick ye'd be scared and want me to sit back in my boat and yelp for help, like a froightened puppy dog, instead of making the way through." Cains thought that O'Shea might be trying to dare him to remain in the boat.

He inclined to believe that O'Shea could not alone enter into conflict with a strong unscrupulous man in such a boat, in such a sea, with hope of success.

At any rate, when O'Shea, presuming on his friendship with the skipper, had accomplished no less a thing than bringing the sailing vessel to a standstill, Caius was prepared to board her at once.
The little boat was still among the ice, but upon the verge of clear water.

The schooner, already near, was drifting nearer.