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Dolly West’s mother–with Dolly in her arms, resting against her soft, ample bosom–sat by the kitchen fire. It was long after dark. The wind was up; the cottage shook in the squalls. She had long ago washed Dolly’s eyes and temporarily stanched the terrifying flow of blood; and now she waited, rocking gently and sometimes crooning a plaintive song of the coast to the restless child.

Tom West came in.

“Hush!”

“Is she sleepin’ still?”

“Off an’ on. She’s in a deal o’ pain. She cries out, poor lamb!” Dolly stirred and whimpered. “Any sign of un, Tom?”

“Tis not time.”

“He might—-“

“‘Twill be hours afore he comes. I’m jus’ wonderin’—-“

“Hush!” Dolly moaned. “Ay, Tom?”

“Terry’s but a wee feller. I’m wonderin’ if he—-“

The woman was confident. “He’ll make it,” she whispered.

“Ay; but if he’s delayed—-“

“He was there afore dusk. An’ the doctor got underway across the Bight—-“

“He’ll not come by the Bight!”

“He’ll come by the Bight. I knows that man. He’ll come by the Bight–an’ he’ll—-“

“If he comes by the Bight he’ll never get here at all. The Bight’s breakin’ up. There’s rotten ice beyond the Spotted Horses. An’ Tickle-my-Ribs is—-“

“He’ll come. He’ll be here afore—-“

“There’s a gale o’ snow comin’ down. ‘Twill cloud the moon. A man would lose hisself—-“

“He’ll come.”

Bad-Weather Tom West went out again–to plod once more down the narrows to the base of Blow-me-Down Dick and search the vague light of the coast for the first sight of Doctor Rolfe. It was not time; he knew that. There would be hours of waiting. It would be dawn before a man could come by Thank-the-Lord and Mad Harry, if he left Afternoon Arm even so early as dusk. And as for crossing the Bight–no man could cross the Bight. It was blowing up too–clouds rising and a threat of snow abroad. Bad-weather Tom glanced apprehensively toward the northeast. It would snow before dawn. The moon was doomed. A dark night would fall. And the Bight–Doctor Rolfe would never attempt to cross the Bight—-

* * * * *

Hanging between the hummock and the pan, the gaff shivering under his weight, Doctor Rolfe slowly subsided toward the hummock. A toe slipped. He paused. It was a grim business. The other foot held. The leg, too, was equal to the strain. He wriggled his toe back to its grip on the edge of the ice. It was an improved foothold. He turned then and began to lift and thrust himself backward. A last thrust on the gaff set him on his haunches on the Arctic hummock, and he thanked Providence and went on. And on–and on! There was a deal of slippery crawling to do, of slow, ticklish climbing. Doctor Rolfe rounded bergs, scaled perilous inclines, leaped crevices.

It was cold as death now. Was it ten below? The gale bit like twenty below.

When the big northeast wind drove the ice back into Anxious Bight and heaped it inshore, the pressure had decreased as the mass of the floe diminished in the direction of the sea. The outermost areas had not felt the impact. They had not folded–had not “raftered.” When the wind failed they had subsided toward the open. As they say on the coast, the ice had “gone abroad.” It was distributed. And after that the sea had fallen flat; and a vicious frost had caught the floe–widespread now–and frozen it fast. It was six miles from the edge of the raftered ice to the first island of the Spotted Horses. The flat pans were solid enough, safe and easy going; but this new, connecting ice–the lanes and reaches of it—-

Doctor Rolfe’s succinct characterization of the condition of Anxious Bight was also keen: “Soft as cheese!”

All that day the sun had fallen hot on the young ice in which the scattered pans of the floe were frozen. Some of the wider patches of green ice had been weakened to the breaking point. Here and there they must have been eaten clear through. Doctor Rolfe contemplated an advance with distaste. And by and by the first brief barrier of new ice confronted him. He must cross it. A black film–the color of water in that light–bridged the way from one pan to another. He would not touch it. He leaped it easily. A few fathoms forward a second space halted him. Must he put foot on it? With a running start he could—-Well, he chose not to touch the second space, but to leap it.