clear of it altogether accordingly after possession of his boat he took hold of one side of the frame on which the sail was extended and began to walk out upon the ice keeping the boat close by his side with the edge of the sail as nearly as possible to the wind now as his motion with the wind had ceased he felt the whole of its fury and he perceived that it was an awful storm indeed m possessed a fair share of the stern and resolute in his character but after proceeding a few steps and observing that no land was in sight before him the surface of the ice slippery in the extreme and the wind blowing a and howling in the forests behind even he was somewhat appalled he felt too a peculiar to effort he had a great mind to lie down in the snow and give himself up to his fate but m s mind was one of that class which leads a man to keep pressing on in what they have undertaken even while they are considering whether they had better not stop the moments of of mind which will sometimes come are not allowed to produce of conduct this had become a settled habit or rather it was a part of his nature and so he pushed his way on over the ice by the as it were of his past m m s of working his boat to until he had gone so far as almost to lose sight of the shore he gradually became warmed with the exercise too and in fact his running ashore at this juncture very probably saved his life he would soon have become stupid and drowsy with the cold and then it is but a step and an easy step too to and death he worked his way slowly and laboriously out from the shore which soon disappeared from view and then he had to guide his steps by the direction of the wind and by its sound behind him as it roared among the trees of the forest like surf upon a shore he went on for half an hour during which time this sound gradually died away and as he could hear no similar indications of the vicinity of land before him he concluded that he had reached the wide part of the lake he took hold of his boat behind leaning down over it and then pushing it along upon the ice and turning it at the same instant round before the wind he leaped upon it and was soon again under way as rapidly as before in the mean time the snow began to a little upon the ice here and there it became lodged in small patches through which m s glided noiselessly and without much additional resistance as the snow increased however these patches became more frequent deeper and more solid and m found that his motion was very sensibly by them he listened occasionally on every side to hear the roaring of the wind in the forests but these sounds gradually ceased and thus relieved him of one source of apprehension the increasing snow however embarrassed him he perceived that when his boat was struggling through one of the little or patches of it a very heavy strain came upon his sail and he had to seize the frame once or twice with his hands to prevent its being carried away at length in one the i� e boat sail carried away he to abandon the wreck drift deeper than the rest his boat came to a stand he jumped off and dragged it through and in a moment was again under way on the other side but in a few minutes more he had the same measure to resort to again he worked on in this way fox half an hour when at length the frail craft was brought up so suddenly in a bank of snow of unusual depth and that the sail was burst from its and the top fell over forward into the snow m rose from his place and stood in the drift surveying the wreck he could have repaired it without much difficulty but it was plain that sail or no sail the boat could go but little farther he therefore separated the blanket from the frame and put it over his shoulders securing it by a belt made from his fore and back stays he then took off the front pair of and restoring the to them he fastened them to his feet he then listened for the sound of the wind upon a forest as anxious now to find the shore as he had been before to avoid it but he could hear no sound except the sweeping whistling rush of the wind over the ice and the driving snow around him he therefore determined to bear away to the left hoping to regain the shore in the direction in which he had left it when he had dragged his boat out upon the lake and taking all he wished to carry away from the wreck in a bundle he left it to be buried in the snow by choosing his way among the bare patches of ice and in the places where the snow was thin he got along for some time without any great difficulty but the snow was now falling very fast and it was not long before his way was very much in fact he soon concluded that he could get along without his better than with them he took them off and then endeavored to make as straight a track as he could guiding himself by the wind which he kept upon his side m m is reduced almost to despair but it was a very laborious and mode of the footing was slippery and treacherous and the snow was getting deep then there 