don't expect I'll kill you, but I'll come damn near to half-killing
you."

"But what can I do?" Charles almost whimpered.

"Just one thing," was Liverpool's final word. "You just pray. You
pray so hard that old dad gets by the police that he does get by.
That's all. Go back to your blankets."

Before they gained Lake Le Barge, the land was sheeted with snow
that would not melt for half a year. Nor could they lay their boat
at will against the bank, for the rim-ice was already forming.
Inside the mouth of the river, just ere it entered Lake Le Barge,
they found a hundred storm-bound boats of the argonauts. Out of
the north, across the full sweep of the great lake, blew an
unending snow gale. Three mornings they put out and fought it and
the cresting seas it drove that turned to ice as they fell in-
board. While the others broke their hearts at the oars, Old
Tarwater managed to keep up just sufficient circulation to survive
by chopping ice and throwing it overboard.

Each day for three days, beaten to helplessness, they turned tail
on the battle and ran back into the sheltering river. By the
fourth day, the hundred boats had increased to three hundred, and
the two thousand argonauts on board knew that the great gale
heralded the freeze-up of Le Barge. Beyond, the rapid rivers would
continue to run for days, but unless they got beyond, and
immediately, they were doomed to be frozen in for six months to
come.