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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne: Had they possessed the tools usually employed by whalers
to cut channels through the ice-fields -- had they been able
to get through to where the river widened -- they might have
been saved. But they had nothing which could make the
least incision in the ice, hard as granite in the excessive
frost. What were they to do?
At that moment several shots on the right bank startled
the unhappy fugitives. A shower of balls fell on the raft.
The devoted passengers had been seen. Immediately after-
wards shots were heard fired from the left bank. The
fugitives, taken between two fires, became the mark of the
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