"This day we go through," Liverpool announced. "We turn back for
nothing. And those of us that dies at the oars will live again and
go on pulling."

And they went through, winning half the length of the lake by
nightfall and pulling on through all the night hours as the wind
went down, falling asleep at the oars and being rapped awake by
Liverpool, toiling on through an age-long nightmare while the stars
came out and the surface of the lake turned to the unruffledness of
a sheet of paper and froze skin-ice that tinkled like broken glass
as their oar-blades shattered it.

As day broke clear and cold, they entered the river, with behind
them a sea of ice. Liverpool examined his aged passenger and found
him helpless and almost gone. When he rounded the boat to against
the rim-ice to build a fire and warm up Tarwater inside and out,
Charles protested against such loss of time.

"This ain't business, so don't you come horning in," Liverpool
informed him. "I'm running the boat trip. So you just climb out
and chop firewood, and plenty of it. I'll take care of dad. You,
Anson, make a fire on the bank. And you, Bill, set up the Yukon
stove in the boat. Old dad ain't as young as the rest of us, and
for the rest of this voyage he's going to have a fire on board to
sit by."

All of which came to pass; and the boat, in the grip of the
current, like a river steamer with smoke rising from the two joints
of stove-pipe, grounded on shoals, hung up on split currents, and
charged rapids and canyons, as it drove deeper into the Northland