They started again the next morning, and instead of leaving the river for the Hudson Bay post, which stood farther back into the wilderness, they held on down-stream, though they afterward regretted this when their provisions once more grew scanty. There was now sharp frost at nights; fangs of ice stretched out behind the boulders and crackling sheets of it gathered in the slacker eddies along the bank. What mattered more was that the portages were frequent, and carrying the canoe over rock coated with frozen spray became dangerous as well as difficult, and Nasmyth working on short rations began to feel the strain. It was only since he had entered that inhospitable region that he had ever been compelled to go without his dinner; and now breakfast and supper were sternly curtailed. When they were stopped for two days by a blinding snowstorm he grew anxious, and his uneasiness had increased when some time afterward they made their evening meal of a single flapjack each. He could readily have eaten a dozen of the thin, flat cakes. The duck they had shot every now and then since crossing the divide had gone; they had not seen a trout since the cold set in; and there did not appear to be any salmon in the river. After breakfast the next morning, Lisle concluded that it would be wise to risk a day looking for a deer, so he invited Nasmyth to take his rifle and the two set out. It cost them some trouble to climb the low bluff above the river through a horrible tangle of fallen trunks. The trees were getting larger and the branches of those the wind had brought down lay spread about them or were resting on the standing growth in networks which Nasmyth would have thought it impossible to traverse had he been alone. Lisle scrambled through, however, and he had no choice except to follow. Where the timber was thinner, the slope was covered with sharp-edged stones which further damaged his already dilapidated boots; and when at last they came out upon a comparatively bare, rocky tableland, a bitter wind met them in the teeth. It drove a little fine snow before it, but Lisle plodded steadily on, explaining that any deer which might be in the neighborhood would have gone down into the sheltered valleys. He had no doubt they would find one of the valleys, for they were generally numerous.