Rolfe proceeded. In a
confidence that was somewhat flushed--he had rested--he went forward.

And presently, midway of a lane of green ice, he heard a gurgle as the
ice bent under his weight. Water washed his boots. He had been on the
lookout for holes. This hole he heard--the spurt and gurgle of it. He
had not seen it. Safe across, Doctor Rolfe grinned. It was a reaction
of relief. "Whew! _Whew!_" he whistled.

* * * * *

By and by he caught ear of the sea breaking under the wind beyond the
Little Spotted Horse. He was nearing the limits of the ice. In full
moonlight the whitecaps flashed news of a tumultuous open. A rumble
and splash of breakers came down with the gale from the point of the
island. It indicated that the sea was working in the passage between
the Spotted Horses and Blow-me-down Dick of the Ragged Run coast. The
waves would run under the ice, would lift it and break it. In this way
the sea would eat its way through the passage. It would destroy the
young ice. It would break the pans to pieces and rub them to slush.

Doctor Rolfe must make the Little Spotted Horse and cross the passage
between the island and the Ragged Run coast. Whatever the issue of
haste, he must carry on and make the best of a bad job. Otherwise he
would come to Tickle-my-Ribs, between the Little Spotted Horse and
Blow-me-Down Dick of Ragged Run, and be marooned from the main shore.
And there was another reason: it was immediate and desperately urgent.
As the sea was biting off the ice in Tickle-my-Ribs, so, too, it was
encroaching upon the body of the ice in Anxious Bight. Anxious Bight
was breaking up. Acres of ice were wrenched from the field at a time
and then broken up by the sea. What was the direction of this swift
melting? It might take any direction. And a survey of the sky troubled
Doctor Rolfe. All this while the light had diminished. It was failing
still. It was failing faster. There was less of the moon. By and by it
would be wholly obscured.

A man would surely lose his life on the ice in thick weather--on one
or other of the reaches of new ice. And thereabouts the areas of young
ice were wider. To tiptoe across the yielding film of these dimly
visible stretches was instantly and dreadfully dangerous. It was
horrifying. A man took his life in his hand every time he left a pan.
Doctor Rolfe was not insensitive. He began to sweat--not with labor
but with fear. When the ice bent under him