of the pans were of an
extent so precariously narrow that their pitching surface could be
crossed only on hands and knees, and in imminent peril of being flung
off into the gaps of open water.

It was a feat of lusty agility, of delicate, experienced skill, of
steadfast courage, to cross the stretches of loose ice, heaving, as
they were, in the swell of the sea. The foothold was sometimes
impermanent--blocks of ice capable of sustaining the weight of a man
through merely a momentary opportunity to leap again; and to the
scanty chance was added the peril of the angle of the ice and the
uncertainty of the path beyond.

Once Tommy Lark slipped when he landed on an inclined pan midway of a
patch of water between two greater pans. His feet shot out and he
began to slide feet foremost into the sea, with increasing momentum,
as a man might fall from a steep, slimy roof. The pan righted in the
trough, however, to check his descent over the edge of the ice. When
it reached the horizontal in the depths of the trough, and there
paused before responding to the lift of the next wave, Tommy Lark
caught his feet; and he was set and balanced against the tip and fling
of the pan in the other direction as the wave slipped beneath and ran
on. When the ice was flat and stable on the crest of the sea, he
leaped from the heavy pan beyond, and then threw himself down to rest
and recover from the shudder and daze of the fate he had escaped. And
the dusk was falling all the while, and the fog, closing in, thickened
the dusk, threatening to turn it impenetrable to the beckoning lights
in the cottages of Scalawag Harbor.

* * * * *

Having come, at last, to a doubtful lane, sparsely spread with ice,
Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl were halted. They were then not more than
half a mile from the rocks of Scalawag. From the substantial ground of
a commodious block, with feet spread to brace themselves against the
pitch of the pan as a man stands on a heaving deck, they appraised the
chances and were disheartened. The lane was like a narrow arm of the
sea, extending, as nearly as could be determined in the dusk, far into
the floe; and there was an opposite shore--another commodious pan. In
the black water of the arm there floated white blocks of ice. Some
were manifestly substantial: a leaping man could pause to rest; but
many--necessary pans, these, to a crossing of the lane--were as
manifestly incapable of bearing a ma