Finally he stopped and stared out over the ice, the thick water, and the gnashing pack-ice.  Far away, it seemed, through the snow-haze, he could see a wooded height, an immense island, round which the river looped in two great arms.

He knew the spot—­trust him.

No beast in its senses would try to swim the long distance across to that island, but from time to time a hunted deer had made the attempt, and a few of those that tried it had survived the ordeal and populated the island.  More than once, in heavy snow, the white wolf himself, at the head of his pack, had hunted a deer down to that very spot, and had watched its head fade across the water into the distance.  Once he had started to follow; but the pack had turned back, and he at length after them, snarling at their heels.  Now he knew how long the swim looked from the deer’s point of view.

It was an ugly proposition.  But—­he turned his head in the stillness, broken only by the multitudinous voices of the ice, and heard a far, far distant multitudinous murmur, and that was no ice, and it settled him.  It was the united voice of the pack on his trail!

He paused, ran up and down, gave an odd, little, deeply expressive whine, like a puppy afraid to take its first bath, plunged in with a rush, and struck out.  Soon he was out upon a piece of drift ice, shaking himself, and began leaping from one lump of floating ice to another.  It was tricky, slippery, slidy work, and a fall might mean a broken leg or a crushed skull; but anything was better than dissolving like mincemeat in the jaws of the slavering pack.

Once, when a long way out, he looked back, and beheld the she-wolf, whining piteously as if she were being thrashed—­and wolves are dumb beasts when “up against it”—­following him.

She, too, had heard that wild, terrifying, implacable music of the wolf-pack following them; and although I, personally, doubt if they would have touched her—­unless it was the other she-wolves that did it—­she seemed to have been smitten by panic, and to prefer the deep sea, or the river, rather, to that pack of maddened devils.

And so, slipping, sliding, splashing, swimming, scrambling, the white wolf, after the most appalling struggle of his life, managed somehow, blindly in the end, with sobbing breath and pounding sides, to make that terrible passage, and collapse as he landed in a stiff white heap, the water frozen in icicles upon his body as he landed.

For a long time he did not move, and it began to seem as if he had burst his heart.  But at last he dragged himself to his feet and turned drunkenly—­to find the she-wolf lying at his side.

Thoughts came back slowly; but at length he shook himself, and stood erect at his full, immense height.  He had given the wolf-pack something tricky in the way of trails to unravel, but he knew what he had taught them too well to build too much on that.  And he was right, for presently, from far, far across the water, came the unutterably terrible baying clamor of the pack, moving swiftly along—­then it stopped.