Angus did not know the ice as Gretchen did. Therefore he could not accept what she accepted so quietly and bravely—the seeming certainty of defeat. He could not believe that the fight was practically over. The cracks looked only four or five feet wide. Nor did he anticipate what she thought would happen immediately—the break-up of the floe under their feet in a cataclysm of violence no terrestrial creature could survive.
Hers was the sensible view. Those great rifts in the ice were only the beginning of a frozen earthquake hard for a chechaquo to imagine. The floe would buckle up, shatter, and fall; the bergs would grind, crash, heave, and wallow; and these travelers would hardly know what hit them. But Angus knew no better than to fight on. He righted the sled, then stood upon it to peer
