If he succeeded in launching the boat, if he kept ahead of the second ice-run, if he did not get caught by some of the runs from the upper Yukon; if luck favored in all these essential particulars, as well as in a score of minor ones, they would reach Sixty Mile and be saved, if--and again the if--he had strength enough to land the boat at Sixty Mile and not go by.
He set to work.

The wall of ice was five feet above the ground on which the boat rested.

First prospecting for the best launching-place, he found where a huge cake of ice shelved upward from the river that ran fifteen feet below to the top of the wall.

This was a score of feet away, and at the end of an hour he had managed to get the boat that far.

He was sick with nausea from his exertions, and at times it seemed that blindness smote him, for he could not see, his eyes vexed with spots and points of light that were as excruciating as diamond-dust, his heart pounding up in his throat and suffocating him.
Elijah betrayed no interest, did not move nor open his eyes; and Daylight fought out his battle alone.