Page:Hendryx--Connie Morgan with the Mounted.djvu/25

Rh shot past, missing the sled by a narrow margin. The toboggan with its upturned front seemed hardly to touch the surface of the water as it skimmed, light as a feather, across the channel and leaped onto the ice of the passing floe.

The man on the ice wasted no time. Even before the toboggan came to rest, he had thrown himself face downward upon its flat surface, and the next instant the voice of the boy rang in his ears: “''Mush! Hi! Hi! Go!” The sled shot back toward the bank, the babiche'' line snapped taut, and with a leap the toboggan with its human freight took the water, sending white spray to the left and to the right. The man felt the shock as the toboggan was jerked onto the shore floe. He raised his head and looked about him. Sixty feet in front a small boy sat upon his sled and cracked a prodigiously long-lashed whip above the heads of the ten big dogs whose feet seemed scarcely to touch the ice as they dashed shoreward with almost incredible speed. Behind him the man saw his floe pass on toward the mighty jam. Upon his ears burst the sound of a great shout and down the steep bank to meet them swarmed fifty