of
the Little Spotted Horse and the passage of Tickle-my-Ribs. He was
heartened.

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 Rolfe'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 Harbor. Ice choked the channel. It was
continuously running in from the open. It was a thin sheet of
fragments. 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. No single block of ice was at
rest.

* * * * *

Precisely as a country doctor might petulantly regard a stretch of
hub-deep crossroad, Doctor Rolfe, the outport physician, complained of
the passage of Tickle-my-Ribs. Not many of the little pans would bear
his weight. They would sustain it momentarily. Then they would tip or
sink. There would be foothold through the instant required to choose
another foothold and leap toward it. Always the leap would have to be
taken from sinking ground. When he came, by good chance, to a pan that
would bear him up for a moment, Doctor Rolfe would have instantly to
discover another heavy block to which to shape his 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 be
unable either to go forward or retreat. 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.

Light was imperative. Doctor Rolfe glanced aloft. "Whew!" he whistled.

The moon and the ominous bank of black cloud were very close. There
was snow in the air. A thickening flurry ran past.

* * * * *

Bad-Weather To