Billy Topsail, M.D.

"Wait," said he, "until I'm across."

A few fathoms forth the ice began to yield. A moment later Doctor Luke 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 Luke danced a zigzag towards 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 Luke lay still and expectant in this pool.

CHAPTER XIX

In Which Doctor Luke and Billy Topsail Hesitate in Fear on the Brink of Tickle-my-Ribs

Dolly West's mother still sat rocking by the kitchen fire. It was long past midnight now. Once more Uncle Joe West tiptoed in from the frosty night.

"Is she sleepin' still?" he whispered.

"Hush! She've jus' toppled off again. She's havin' a deal o' pain, Joe. An' she've been bleedin' again."

"Put her down on the bed, dear."

The woman shook her head. "I'm afeared 'twould start the wounds, Joe. I'm not wantin' t' start un again. Any sign o' Doctor Luke yet, Joe?"

"Not yet."

"He'll come soon."

"No; 'tis not near time. 'Twill be dawn afore he – "

"Soon, Joe."

"He'll be delayed by snow. The moon's near gone. 'Twill be black dark in half an hour. I felt a flake o' snow as I come in. An' he'll maybe wait at Mad Harry – "

"He's comin' by the Bight, Joe."

Dolly stirred – cried out – awakened with a start – and lifted her bandaged head a little.

She did not open her eyes.

"Is that you, Doctor Luke, sir?" she plainted.

"Hush!" the mother whispered. "'Tis not the Doctor yet."

"When – "

"He's comin'."

"I'll take a look," said Joe.

He went out again and stumbled down the path to Blow-me-Down Dick by Tickle-my-Ribs.

Doctor Luke lay still and expectant in the pool of water near the pan-ice and rocks of the Little Spotted Horse. He waited. Nothing happened. It was encouraging. But he did not dare stand up. Nor would he dare to get to his knees and crawl.

There was no help to be had from the agonized Billy Topsail.

Both knew it.

"Shall I come, sir?" Billy called.

"Stay where you are," Doctor Luke replied, "or we'll both drop through. Don't move."

"Ay, sir."

Presently Doctor Luke ventured delicately to take off a mitten – to extend his hand, to sink his finger-nails in the ice and attempt to draw himself forward. He tried again. It was a failure. His finger-nails were too short. He could merely scratch the ice. He reflected that if he did not concentrate his weight – that if he kept it distributed – he would not break through. And once more he tried to make use of his finger-nails.

There was no snow on this ice. It was a smooth, hard surface. It was dry. It turned out that the nails of the other hand were longer. Doctor Luke managed to gain half an inch before they slipped.

They slipped again – and again and again. It was hopeless. Doctor Luke lay still – pondering.

Billy Topsail's agony of anxiety increased.

"Is you safe, sir?"

"Stay where you are!"

"Ay, sir!"

Doctor Luke could not continue to lie still. Presently he would be frozen in the pool of water. In emergencies he was used to indulging in a simple philosophical reflection: A man can lose his life but once. Now he shot his gaff towards the pan-ice, to be rid of the incumbrance of it, and lifted himself on his palms and toes. By this the distribution of his weight was not greatly disturbed. It was not concentrated upon one point. It was divided by four and laid upon four points.

And there were no fearsome consequences. It was a hopeful experiment. Doctor Luke stepped by inches on his hands towards the pan-ice – dragging his toes. In this way he came to the line of solid ice under the cliffs of the Little Spotted Horse and gained the refuge of it. And then he directed the crossing of Billy Topsail, who was much lighter, and crossed safely. Whereupon they set out for the point of the Little Spotted Horse and the passage of Tickle-my-Ribs. And they were heartened.

A country physician might say of a muddy, midnight call, in the wind and dark of a wet night in the fall of the year, that the roads were bad. Doctor Luke would have said of the way from Our Harbour to the Little Spotted Horse that he had been "in a bit of a mess." Thus far there had been nothing extravagantly uncommon in the night's experience. Doctor Luke and Billy Topsail had merely encountered and survived the familiar difficulties of a passage of Anxious Bight in a period of critical weather in the spring of the year.

A folded floe and six miles of rubber ice were not sufficiently out of the way to constitute an impressive incident. Doctor Luke had fared better and worse in his time. So had Billy Topsail. All this was not a climax. It was something to be forgotten in a confusion of experiences of the same description. It would not remain very long in the memory of either. In what lay ahead, however – the passage of Tickle-my-Ribs – there was doubtless an adventure.

"She'll be heavin' in this wind," Billy Topsail said.

"We'll get across," Doctor Luke replied, confidently. "Come along!"

Tickle-my-Ribs was heaving. The sea had by this time eaten its way clear through the passage from the open to the first reaches of Anxious Bight and far and wide beyond. The channel was half a mile long – in width a quarter of a mile at the narrowest. Doctor Luke's path was determined. It must lead from the point of the island to the base of Blow-me-Down Dick and the adjoining fixed and solid ice of the narrows to Ragged Run Harbour. And ice choked the channel loosely from shore to shore.

It was a thin sheet of fragments – running through from the open. There was only an occasional considerable pan. A high sea ran outside. Waves from the open slipped under this field of little pieces and lifted it in running swells. In motion Tickle-my-Ribs resembled a vigorously shaken carpet. No single block of ice was at rest. The crossing would have been hazardous in the most favourable circumstances. And now aloft the moon and the ominous bank of black cloud had come close together.

Precisely as a country doctor might petulantly regard a stretch of hub-deep cross-road, Doctor Luke, the outport physician, when he came to the channel between the Little Spotted Horse and Blow-me-Down Dick of the Ragged Run coast, regarded the passage of Tickle-my-Ribs. Not many of the little pans would bear the weight of either himself or Billy Topsail. They would sustain it momentarily. Then they would tip or sink. There would be foothold only through the instant required to choose another foothold and leap towards it.

Always, moreover, the leap would have to be taken from sinking ground. When they came, by good chance, to a pan that would bear them up for a moment, they would have instantly to discover another heavy block to which to shape their agitated course. There would be no rest – no certainty beyond the impending moment. But leaping thus – alert and agile and daring – a man might —

Might? Mm-m – a man might! And he might not! There were contingencies. A man might leap short and find black water where he had depended upon a footing of ice – a man might land on the edge of a pan and fall slowly back for sheer lack of power to obtain a balance – a man might misjudge the strength of a pan to bear him up – a man might find no ice near enough for the next immediately imperative leap – a man might confront the appalling exigency of a lane of open water.

As a matter of fact, a man might be unable either to go forward or retreat. A man might be submerged and find the shifting floe closed over his head. A man might easily lose his life in the driving, swelling rush of the shattered floe through Tickle-my-Ribs. And there was the light to consider. A man might be caught in the dark. He would be in hopeless case if caught in the dark. And the light might —