We shall manage it easily enough, if the ice does not form too thickly.
"If the worst comes to the worst, we should stop at one of the villages, get the people to help us to haul her well up, wait till the snows are quite over, and then make our way back on foot, and come and fetch the boat up when the spring floods are over." "Then the pass is not so dangerous after all, captain," Fergus said with a smile.
"Not when the snow has once hardened, and to men accustomed to it.
As soon as the weather gets settled there will be a little traffic, and the snow will be beaten down.

Besides, where the hills come steep to the water's edge, a man on foot can always make his way along when the water is low; though a horseman might not be able to do so." "In fact, I suppose," Fergus said, "you all combine, at Leitmeritz, to represent the passes as being a great deal more dangerous than they are; in order to force those obliged to make the journey to take as many men as possible with him, or to pay two or three times the proper fare, by boat." "The passes over the hills would be terrible, now," the man said.
"Most of them would be absolutely impassable, until the snow hardens.
"As for the rest," he added with a smile, "it may be that there is something in what you say; but you see, times are hard.

There is little work to be done, and scarce any timber coming down; and if we did not get a good job, occasionally, it would go very hard with us." By nightfall they were nearly through the defile.

Lanterns were placed in the bow of the boat and, until long after Fergus was asleep, the men continued to work at their poles.

When he woke up in the morning the boat was floating down a quiet river, with the plains of Saxony on either side, and the mountain range far astern.
At noon they neared Dresden, and an hour later Fergus stepped ashore.