lled
down his coonskin cap, pulled up his sealskin gloves, handed
Bad-Weather West's boy over to his housekeeper for supper and bed (he
was a bachelor man), and closed the surgery door upon himself.

* * * * *

Doctor Rolfe took to the harbor ice and drove head down into the gale.
There were ten miles to go. It was to be a night's work. He settled
himself doggedly. It was heroic. In the circumstances, however, this
aspect of the night's work was not stimulating to a tired old man. It
was a mile and a half to Creek Head, where Afternoon Tickle led a
narrow way from the shelter of Afternoon Arm to Anxious Bight and the
open sea; and from the lee of Creep Head--a straightaway across
Anxious Bight--it was nine miles to Blow-me-Down Dick of Ragged Run
Harbor. And Doctor Rolfe had rested but three hours. And he was old.

Impatient to revive the accustomed comfort and glow of strength he
began to run. When he came to Creep Head and there paused to survey
Anxious Bight in a flash of the moon, he was tingling and warm and
limber and eager. Yet he was dismayed by the prospect. No man could
cross from Creep Head to Blow-me-Down Dick of Ragged Run Harbor in the
dark. Doctor Rolfe considered the light. Communicating masses of
ragged cloud were driving low across Anxious Bight. Offshore there was
a sluggish bank of black cloud. The moon was risen and full. It was
obscured. The intervals of light were less than the intervals of
shadow. Sometimes a wide, impenetrable cloud, its edges alight,
darkened the moon altogether. Still, there was light enough. All that
was definitely ominous was the bank of black cloud lying sluggishly
offshore. The longer Doctor Rolfe contemplated its potentiality for
catastrophe the more he feared it.

"If I were to be overtaken by snow!"

* * * * *

It was blowing high. There was the bite and shiver of frost in the
wind. Half a gale ran in from the open sea. Midway of Anxious Bight it
would be a saucy, hampering, stinging head wind. And beyond Creep Head
the ice was in doubtful condition. A man might conjecture; that was
all. It was mid-spring. Freezing weather had of late alternated with
periods of thaw and rain. There had been windy days. Anxious Bight had
even once been clear of ice. A westerly wind had broken the ice and
swept it out beyond the heads. In a gale from the northeast, however,
these fragments had returned with accumulations