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They went then to the crest of Black Cliff to survey the ice in the run. Not a word was spoken on the way. A momentous situation, by the dramatic quality of which both young men were moved, had been precipitated by the untimely receipt of the telegram for Elizabeth Luke’s mother.

* * * * *

Point-o’-Bay, in the lee of which the cottages of Point-o’-Bay Cove were gathered, as in the crook of a finger, thrust itself into the open sea. Scalawag Island, of which Scalawag Harbor was a sheltered cove, lay against the open sea. Between Point-o’-Bay and Scalawag Island was the run called Scalawag, of the width of two miles, leading from the wide open into Whale Bay, where it was broken and lost in the mist of the islands. There had been wind at sea–a far-off gale, perhaps, then exhausted, or plunging away into the southern seas, leaving a turmoil of water behind it.

Directly into the run, rolling from the open, the sea was swelling in gigantic billows. There would have been no crossing at all had there not been ice in the run; but there was ice in the run–plenty of ice, fragments of the fields in the Labrador drift, blown in by a breeze of the day before, and wallowing there, the wind having fallen away to a wet, gray breeze which served but to hold the ice in the bay.

It seemed, from the crest of Black Cliff, where Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl stood gazing, each debating with his own courage, that the ice was heavy enough for the passage–thick ice, of varying extent, from fragments, like cracked ice, to wide pans; and the whole, it seemed, floated in contact, pan touching pan all the way across from the feet of Black Cliff to the first rocks of Scalawag Harbor.

What was inimical was the lift and fall of the ice in the great swells running in from the open sea.

“Well?” said Tommy Lark.

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“It might be done. I don’t know.”

“Ay; it might be. No tellin’ for sure, though. The ice is in a wonderful tumble out there.”

“Seems t’ be heavy ice on the edge o’ the sea.”

“‘Tis in a terrible commotion. I’d not chance it out there. I’ve never seed the ice so tossed about in the sea afore.”

Tommy Lark reflected.

“Ay,” he determined at last; “the best course across is by way o’ the heavy ice on the edge o’ the sea. There mus’ be a wonderful steep slant t’ some o’ them pans when the big seas slips beneath them. Yet a man could go warily an’ maybe keep from slidin’ off. If the worst comes t’ the worst, he could dig his toes an’ nails in an’ crawl. ‘Tis not plain from here if them pans is touchin’ each other all the way across; but it looks that way–I ‘low they is touchin’, with maybe a few small gaps that a man could get round somehow. Anyhow, ’tis not quite certain that a man would cast hisself away t’ no purpose out there; an’ if there’s evil news in that telegram I ‘low a man could find excuse enough t’ try his luck.”

“There’s news both good and evil in it.”

“I don’t know,” said Tommy Lark uneasily. “Maybe there is. ‘Tis awful t’ contemplate. I’m wonderful nervous, Sandy. Isn’t you?”

“I is.”

“Think the wind will rise? It threatens.”

“I don’t know. It has a sort of a switch to it that bodes a night o’ temper. ‘Tis veerin’ t’ the east. ‘Twill be a gale from the open if it blows at all.”

Tommy Lark turned from a listless contemplation of the gray reaches of the open sea.

“News both good an’ evil!” he mused.