he gasped and held his
breath; and he came each time to the solid refuge of a pan with his
teeth set, his face contorted, his hands clenched--a shiver in the
small of his back.

To achieve safety once, however, was not to win a final relief; it was
merely to confront, in the same circumstances, a precisely similar
peril. Doctor Rolfe was not physically exhausted; every muscle that he
had was warm and alert. Yet he was weak; a repetition of suspense had
unnerved him. A full hour of this, and sometimes he chattered and
shook in a nervous chill. In the meantime he had approached the rocks
of the Little Spotted Horse.

In the lee of the Little Spotted Horse the ice had gathered as in a
back current. It was close packed alongshore to the point of the
island. Between this solidly frozen press of pans and the dissolving
field in Anxious Bight there had been a lane of ruffled open water
before the frost fell. It measured perhaps fifty yards. It was now
black and still, sheeted with new ice which had been delayed in
forming by the ripple of that exposed situation. Doctor Rolfe had
encountered nothing as doubtful. He paused on the brink. A long, thin
line of solid pan ice, ghostly white in the dusk beyond, was attached
to the rocks of the Little Spotted Horse. It led all the way to
Tickle-my-Ribs. Doctor Rolfe must make that line of solid ice. He must
cross the wide lane of black, delicately frozen new ice that lay
between and barred his way.

He waited for the moon. When the light broke--a thin, transient
gleam--he started. A few fathoms forth the ice began to yield. A
moment later he stopped short and recoiled. There was a hole--gaping
wide and almost under his feet. He stopped. The water overflowed and
the ice cracked. He must not stand still. To avoid a second hole he
twisted violently to the right and almost plunged into a third
opening. It seemed the ice was rotten from shore to shore. And it was
a long way across. Doctor Rolfe danced a zigzag toward the pan ice
under the cliffs, spurting forward and retreating and swerving. He did
not pause; had he paused he would have dropped through. When he was
within two fathoms of the pan ice a foot broke through and tripped him
flat on his face. With his weight thus distributed he was momentarily
held up. Water squirted and gurgled out of the break--an inch of
water, forming a pool. Doctor Rolfe lay still and expectant in this
pool.

* * * * *