When they floundered with much effort to the surface of the snow the crystal cliff that had been their home was gone. The waves were tossing and eddying where it had plunged over. Where it had ground the side of the point snow and ice had been torn away, leaving exposed the naked gray rocks. Around the head of the promontory drifted a long, low mass of yellow ice, water-worn and unlovely, that had been the bottom of the berg. About them the snow was crusted, and the crust was punctured with many pits where fragments of the ice from the berg had fallen, and with other pits where the seven dogs of the pack had pitched headlong. One by one the gray runners crawled to the surface and emerged like rats from their holes to sprawl upon the snow crust, looking exceedingly foolish, as is the manner of dignified dogs when they are spilled promiscuously into such a predicament. A little way from where the man and woman stood the sledge was upended in the drift. If walked over quickly the crust of the snow was firm enough to offer footing. Polaris soon righted the sledge, which had suffered no harm in its fall, and inspanned the team. They set off for the shore over a succession of dips and rises along the back of the promontory. Where it was joined to the shore, however, they found an obstacle. The land bristled with a bulwark of rocks, snow, and ice of a height to make it impossible for the man to guide the sledge over it. Rose Emer had come to look to Polaris in the face of each new difficulty, finding in him an infinite resource and genius for surmounting them. She turned to him now, and found that he had solved the puzzle. "We can scramble over this," he said; "you and I and the dogs, and we will find a spot suitable for landing the sledge along the shore. Then I will return and manage with the sledge across the drift ice. It is wedged in the cove yonder so firmly that it will be no great task." The girl glanced down into the cove, where the glittering scum of fragments rose and fell with the swell of the waves, and her eyes widened; but she offered no objection. She had yet to see this man fail in what he attempted. Using his spear for an alpenstock, Polaris took her by the arm, and they made the ascent of the rocks. Sometimes he lifted her as lightly as though she were a babe and set her ahead of him, while he climbed to a farther projection of the crags. Sometimes he carried her bodily in one arm and climbed on easily with the double weight. So they reached the far side of the obstruction, and after them scrambled and leaped the pack.