Another followed it, nearer the surface, and as they sprang
back, upreared mightily, and, with a ton or so of soil on its broad
back, bowled insolently onward. And yet another, reaching inshore like
a huge hand, ripped three careless pines out by the roots and bore them
away.
Day had broken, and the driving white gorged the Yukon from shore to
shore. What of the pressure of pent water behind, the speed of the
flood had become dizzying. Down all its length the bank was being
gashed and gouged, and the island was jarring and shaking to its
foundations.
"Oh, great! Great!" Frona sprang up and down between the men. "Where
is your fake, baron?"
"Ah!" He shook his head. "Ah! I was wrong. I am miserable. But the
magnificence! Look!"
He pointed down to the bunch of islands which obstructed the bend.
There the mile-wide stream divided and subdivided again,--which was
well for water, but not so well for packed ice. The islands drove
their wedged heads into the frozen flood and tossed the cakes high into
the air. But cake pressed upon cake and shelved out of the water, out
and up, sliding and grinding and climbing, and still more cakes from
behind, till hillocks and mountains of ice upreared and crashed among
the trees.
"A likely place for a jam," Jacob Welse said. "Get the glasses,
Frona." He gazed through them long and steadily.
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