Reluctantly she obeyed, clinging tightly to the knotted rope. She saw him give the sled a violent push and jump aboard. It started down the incline, gathering momentum at a dreadful rate. In twenty seconds it was rushing onward like a cannon-ball raising the snow and shrieking as it went.... The speed eventually decreased. They passed the frozen lake and made for Linderman, Jim dragging the sled and Angela pushing on the gee-pole. After that it was a nightmare. Angela's impression was of one endless white wilderness, broken only by a network of frozen lakes and occasional icy precipices. At nights they pitched their tent amid the vast loneliness, banking it with snow to keep out the freezing cold. At times they were held up for days, confined to the evil-smelling tent with a blizzard blowing outside. The oilstove was a blessing, despite its sickening odor, and only the piled-up snow kept the small tent from being blown to ribbons. It was little more than an Esquimo igloo. When the wind went this merciless husband downed the tent, packed up, and was off again into the wilderness--and there were 400 miles of this! The glare of the sun on the white snow blinded her, until she accepted the snow goggles which she had at first indignantly refused. The stillness frightened her. Never had she imagined such terrible soul-torturing silence; at times she asked questions merely for the pleasure of hearing a human voice. When they overtook some struggling party the desire to stop and talk was all-consuming. But Jim wasn't for wasting time in useless conversation. She hated him for that. She hated him for all the agony and pain that he had brought her. Fits of uncontrollable anger possessed her. She gave vent to her feelings in bitter rebuke. It had some effect, too. She knew it hurt him by the queer light in his eyes, but he said nothing--which made her angrier still. He had become even more silent than she. One thing, however, he did regularly. When they partook of the evening meal--a sickly concoction of beans and coffee, or canned meat, and nestled down inside the bearskin sleeping-bags beside the eternal oilstove, his deep voice growled: "Good-night, Angela!" Sometimes she responded and sometimes she did not. But it made no difference--the "Good-night" was always uttered. The last stage of the journey was a fight with time. They struck the Yukon River and went down over the sloppy ice. The break-up was coming, and Dawson was eighty miles away. Despite her bitter feelings she found excitement in the combat. At any moment the ice might split with thundering noise and go smashing down to the sea, piling up in vast pyramids as it went. Each morning they expected to wake and find the ice in movement. "She'll hold," cried Jim. "Another twenty miles and we're through!"