The traders who had gone before them were certainly having a hard time. Our friends traveled very slowly for two days, walking most of the time. Then they found that the veil of ice that had formed on the wide stream since the region had become a torn-away world, would bear both men and dogs; the sun merely made it spongy for a few hours each day, but did not destroy the ice, which was now three or four inches thick. Each night when the sun set and the air cooled the water on the surface of this sheet of smooth ice congealed again, making a splendid course for skating--had they only possessed the skates. But the sleds slipped more easily over the ice and the dogs were saved for two or three days longer. The brutes were almost starved, however, and one of them going lame, when they were released at a certain stopping place, the others pitched upon their wounded comrade and like wolves tore the unfortunate dog to pieces before Roebach could beat them into submission. Andy Sudds chopped through the ice and set lines for fish; but the catch was so small that the party could not spare more than the bones for the dogs. Starvation faced them. Mark was miserably despondent, and Wash was so lugubrious all the time that he seldom exploded in his usual pyrotechnical displays of big words. His grain supply for the Shanghai had completely run out, too, and the colored man divided his own poor rations with his pet. "And the rooster's that lean he wouldn't be anything but skin and bone if we killed and cooked him," Jack wickedly proposed. Wash looked upon his young friend in extreme horror. "Eat Buttsy?" he finally gasped. "Why Massa Jack! I'd jest as lief eat a baby--dat I would!" But the matter of eating was past the joking stage now. The dogs fell on the ice and could not get up again. It was a mercy to put them out of their misery, and this is what Phineas Roebach and Andy did--shooting each faithful creature through the head and leaving the carcasses for the wolves which had, all this time, followed the little party at a respectful distance. "If wolf meat was fit to eat we'd certainly live on the fat of the land," quoth the oil man. "I wouldn't mind meeting a bear--savage as that other fellow was," said Andy Sudds. And before they were through with this adventure they saw all the bear meat--and that very much alive--that the party ever wished to behold. First, however, came Mark's invention. They dragged the empty sleds--after the dogs were killed--for several miles and then went into camp beside the stream, while the sun rose and warmed them most uncomfortably. Roebach suggested abandoning the sleds as they could carry the little stock of movables they now owned. But Andy was opposed to this as he feared the professor might break down, in which event they would have to drag him. "We must keep one of the sleds, at least," the old hunter insisted. "I have a scheme," quoth Mark, suddenly. "Why not use the sleds--both of them?"