The one remaining oar Dan took astern, dropped it between two pegs placed there for the purpose, and working the oar adeptly back and forth both propelled and steered the boat shoreward. The damaged bow was found to be so well repaired that it leaked very little, and in a few minutes a safe landing was made upon a sloping, gravelly bit of beach. For several minutes the boys stood silent, looking toward the fog-enshrouded sea from which they had just been delivered. Dan at length broke silence: “Thank the Lord, we’re safe ashore,” said he reverently. “Yes, it’s almost too good to believe.” Tears of joy stood in Paul’s eyes as he spoke. “When the ship finds us and picks us up, Dan, I’m going to tell Captain Bluntt that it was all my fault we didn’t go aboard when he told us to, and I’m going to tell everybody how you saved our lives by mending the boat. We never could have got off the ice if you hadn’t mended the boat.” “’Twere nothin’ to mend th’ boat,” deprecated Dan. “Oh, yes, it was,” insisted Paul. “There aren’t many could have done it, and when the ship picks us up I’ll tell them all about it.” But they were not to see the _North Star_ again, and they were not to be picked up. They were destined to face the rigors of a sub-Arctic winter in the unknown wilderness upon whose shores they had drifted. CHAPTER VIII FACING STARVATION Paul and Dan surveyed their surroundings. So far as they could discover, in the dense fog, which enshrouded land as well as sea, they were stranded upon a desolate, verdureless coast. Behind them rose a ledge of storm-scoured rocks which reached out into the sea in a rugged cliff to the eastward, and formed the point they had rounded to enter the bight. And out on the rocky point they could hear the breakers in dismal, rhythmic succession, pounding upon the rocks. The sounding breakers made Paul shudder as he realized how narrowly he and Dan had escaped a fate of which he scarcely dared think. He was profoundly thankful for their deliverance, and rugged as their coast was he had no thought of complaint against the fate that had placed him upon it. Nowhere was there a tree or even a bush to be seen. Even the moss that here and there found lodgment in crevasses of the rocks seemed to struggle for an uncertain existence. Some driftwood, however, strewn along the beach, offered fuel for their tent stove. “’Tis a wonderful bleak place,” said Dan, “but I’m thinkin’ ’tis better inside, with timber growin’ an’ maybe a river comin’ in, t’ bring this drift down.” “But it’s too late to go up there tonight,” protested Paul, dreading to venture upon the fog-covered water again, even in the boat. “Aye, ’tis too late to go t’night. ’Tis already growin’ dusk, an’ I’m not thinkin’ t’ cruise around in th’ fog, on land or on water. ’Twould be temptin’ th’ Lord t’ send us adrift ag’in, after settin’ us safe ashore.”