CHAPTER XVIII
_In Which Discretion Urges Doctor Luke to Lie Still in a Pool of Water_
It was a mean light--this intermittent moonlight: with the clouds slowand thick, and the ominous bank of black cloud rising all the while fromthe horizon. A man should go slow in a light like that! But Doctor Lukeand Billy Topsail must make haste. And by and by they caught ear of thesea breaking under the wind beyond the Little Spotted Horse. They werenearing the limits of the ice. In full moonlight the whitecaps flashednews of a tumultuous open. A rumble and splash of breakers came downwith the gale from the point of the island. It indicated that the seawas working in the passage between the Spotted Horses and Blow-me-DownDick of the Ragged Run coast. The waves would run under the ice--wouldlift it and break it. In this way the sea would eat its way through thepassage. It would destroy the young ice. It would break the pans topieces and rub them to slush.
Doctor Luke and Billy Topsail must make the Little Spotted Horse andcross the passage between the island and the Ragged Run coast.
"Come on!" said the Doctor again.
Whatever the issue of haste, they must carry on and make the best of abad job. Otherwise they would come to Tickle-my-Ribs, between the LittleSpotted Horse and Blow-me-Down Dick of Ragged Run, and be marooned fromthe mainshore. And there was another reason. It was immediate anddesperately urgent. As the sea was biting off the ice in Tickle-my-Ribsso too it was encroaching upon the body of the ice in Anxious Bight.
Anxious Bight was breaking up. The scale of its dissolution wasgigantic. Acres of ice were wrenched from the field at a time and thenbroken up by the sea. What was the direction of this swift melting? Itmight take any direction. And a survey of the sky troubled Doctor Lukeno less than Billy Topsail. All this while the light had diminished. Itwas failing still. It was failing faster. There was less of the moon. Byand by it would be wholly obscured.
"If we're delayed," Doctor Luke declared, "we'll be caught by thedark."
"Hear that, sir!" Billy exclaimed.
They listened.
"Breaking up fast!" said the Doctor.
Again there was a splitting crash. Another great fragment of the ice hadbroken away.
"Come on!" cried Billy, in alarm.
At first prolonged intervals of moonlight had occurred. Masses of cloudhad gone driving across a pale and faintly starlit sky. A new proportionwas disclosed. Now the stars were brilliant in occasional patches ofdeep sky. A glimpse of the moon was rare. From the northeast the ominousbank of black cloud had risen nearly overhead. It would eventuallycurtain both stars and moon and make a thick black night of it.
A man would surely lose his life on the ice in thick weather--on one orother of the reaches of new ice. And thereabouts the areas of young icewere wider. They were also more tender. Thin ice is a proverb of periland daring. To tiptoe across the yielding film of these dimly visiblestretches was instantly and dreadfully dangerous. It was horrifying. Aman took his life in his hand every time he left a pan.
Doctor Luke was not insensitive. Neither was Billy Topsail. They beganto sweat--not with labour, but with fear. When the ice bent under them,they gasped and held their breath. They were in livid terror of beingdropped through into the sea. They were afraid to proceed--they darednot stand still; and they came each time to the solid refuge of a panwith breath drawn, teeth set, faces contorted, hands clenched--a shiverin the small of the back. This was more exhausting than the labour ofthe folded floe. Upon every occasion it was like escaping an abyss.
To achieve safety once, however, was not to win a final relief--it wasmerely to confront, in the same circumstances, a precisely similarperil. Neither Doctor Luke nor Billy Topsail was physically exhausted.Every muscle that they had was warm and alert. Yet they were weak. Arepetition of suspense had unnerved them. A full hour of this andsometimes they chattered and shook in a nervous chill.
In the meantime they had approached the rocks of the Little SpottedHorse.
They rested a moment.
"Now for it, boy!" said the Doctor, then.
"Ay, ay, sir!"
"Sorry you came, Billy?"
Billy was a truthful boy--and no hero of the melodrama.
"I wisht we was across, sir," said he.
"So do I," the Doctor agreed. "Come," he added, heartily; "we'll _go_across!"
In the lee of the Little Spotted Horse the ice had gathered as in aback-current. It was close packed alongshore to the point of the island.Between this solidly frozen press of pans and the dissolving field inAnxious Bight there had been a lane of ruffled open water before thefrost fell. It measured perhaps fifty yards. It was now black andstill--sheeted with new ice which had been delayed in forming by theripple of that exposed situation.
Doctor Luke and Billy Topsail had encountered nothing as doubtful. Theypaused on the brink. A long, thin line of solid pan-ice, ghostly whitein the dusk beyond, was attached to the rocks of the Little SpottedHorse. It led all the way to Tickle-my-Ribs. They must make that line ofsolid ice. They must cross the wide lane of black, delicately frozen newice that lay between and barred their way. And there was no way out ofit.
Doctor Luke waited for the moon. When the light broke--a thin, transientgleam--he started.
"Wait," said he, "until I'm across."
A few fathoms forth the ice began to yield. A moment later Doctor Lukestopped short and recoiled. There was a hole--gaping wide and almostunder his feet. He stopped. The water overflowed and the ice cracked. Hemust not stand still. To avoid a second hole he twisted violently to theright and almost plunged into a third opening. It seemed the ice wasrotten from shore to shore.
And it was a long way across. Doctor Luke danced a zigzag towards thepan-ice under the cliffs--spurting forward and retreating and swerving.He did not pause. Had he paused he would have dropped through. When hewas within two fathoms of the pan-ice a foot broke through and trippedhim flat on his face. With his weight thus distributed he wasmomentarily held up. Water squirted and gurgled out of the break--aninch of water, forming a pool.
Doctor Luke lay still and expectant in this pool.
Billy Topsail, M.D.: A Tale of Adventure With Doctor Luke of the Labrador Page 20
