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Smoke Bellew by Jack London
page 59 of 182 (32%)
"Well, you're the real goods at any rate," Kit grinned back at him.
"It makes me respect God the more just to look at you."

"He was sure goin' some, eh?" was Shorty's fashion of overcoming the
embarrassment of the compliment.

The trail by water crossed Lake Le Barge. Here was no fast current,
but a tideless stretch of forty miles which must be rowed unless a
fair wind blew. But the time for fair wind was past, and an icy
gale blew in their teeth out of the north. This made a rough sea,
against which it was almost impossible to pull the boat. Added to
their troubles was driving snow; also, the freezing of the water on
their oar-blades kept one man occupied in chopping it off with a
hatchet. Compelled to take their turn at the oars, Sprague and
Stine patently loafed. Kit had learned how to throw his weight on
an oar, but he noted that his employers made a seeming of throwing
their weights and that they dipped their oars at a cheating angle.

At the end of three hours, Sprague pulled his oar in and said they
would run back into the mouth of the river for shelter. Stine
seconded him, and the several hard-won miles were lost. A second
day, and a third, the same fruitless attempt was made. In the river
mouth, the continually arriving boats from White Horse made a
flotilla of over two hundred. Each day forty or fifty arrived, and
only two or three won to the north-west short of the lake and did
not come back. Ice was now forming in the eddies, and connecting
from eddy to eddy in thin lines around the points. The freeze-up
was very imminent.

"We could make it if they had the souls of clams," Kit told Shorty,
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