Doctor Rolfe was
as cunning and sure with a gaff as any old hand of the sealing fleet.
He employed it now to advantage. It was a vaulting pole. He walked
less than he leaped. This was no work for the half light of an
obscured moon. Sometimes he halted for light; but delay annoyed him. A
pause of ten minutes--he squatted for rest meantime--threw him into a
state of incautious irritability. At this rate it would be past dawn
before he made the cottages of Ragged Run Harbor.

Impatient of precaution, he presently chanced a leap. It was error. As
the meager light disclosed the path a chasm of fifteen feet intervened
between the edge of the upturned pan upon which he stood and a
flat-topped hummock of Arctic ice to which he was bound. There was
footing for the tip of his gaff midway below. He felt for this footing
to entertain himself while the moon delayed. It was there. He was
tempted. The chasm was critically deep for the length of the gaff.
Worse than that, the hummock was higher than the pan. Doctor Rolfe
peered across. It was not _much_ higher. It would merely be necessary
to lift stoutly at the climax of the leap. And there was need of
haste--a little maid in hard case at Ragged Run and a rising cloud
threatening black weather.

A slow cloud covered the moon. It was aggravating. There would be no
light for a long time. A man must take a chance----. And all at once
the old man gave way to impatience; he gripped his gaff with angry
determination and projected himself toward the hummock of Arctic ice.
A flash later he had regretted the hazard. He perceived that he had
misjudged the height of the hummock. Had the gaff been a foot longer
he would have cleared the chasm. It occurred to him that he would
break his back and merit the fate of his callow mistake. Then his toes
caught the edge of the flat-topped hummock. His boots were of soft
seal leather. He gripped the ice. And now he hung suspended and inert.
The slender gaff bent under the prolonged strain of his weight and
shook in response to a shiver of his arms. Courage failed a little.
Doctor Rolfe was an old man. And he was tired. And he felt unequal----

* * * * *

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 bl