n up.

As the pan upon which Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl stood lay near the
edge of the floe, the sea was running up the lane in almost
undiminished swells--the long, slow waves of a great ground swell, not
a choppy wind-lop, but agitated by the wind and occasionally
breaking. It was a thirty-foot sea in the open. In the lane it was
somewhat less--not much, however; and the ice in the lane and all
round about was heaving in it--tumbled about, rising and falling, the
surface all the while at a changing slant from the perpendicular.

Rowl was uneasy.

"What you think, Tommy?" said he. "I don't like t' try it. I 'low we
better not."

"We can't turn back."

"No; not very well."

"There's a big pan out there in the middle. If a man could reach that
he could choose the path beyond."

"'Tis not a big pan."

"Oh, 'tis a fairish sort o' pan."

"'Tis not big enough, Tommy."

Tommy Lark, staggering in the motion of the ice, almost off his
balance, peered at the pan in the middle of the lane.

"'Twould easily bear a man," said he.

"'Twould never bear two men."

"Maybe not."

"Isn't no 'maybe' about it," Rowl declared. "I'm sure 'twouldn't bear
two men."

"No," Tommy Lark agreed. "I 'low 'twouldn't."

"A man would cast hisself away tryin' t' cross on that small ice."

"I 'low he might."

"Well, then," Rowl demanded, "what we goin' t' do?"

"We're goin' t' cross, isn't we?"

"'Tis too parlous a footin' on them small cakes."

"Ay; 'twould be ticklish enough if the sea lay flat an' still all the
way. An' as 'tis----"

"'Tis like leapin' along the side of a steep."

"Wonderful steep on the side o' the seas."

"Too slippery, Tommy. It can't be done. If a man didn't land jus'
right he'd shoot off."

"That he would, Sandy!"

"Well?"

"I'll go first, Sandy. I'll start when we lies in the trough. I 'low I
can make that big pan in the middle afore the next sea cants it. You
watch me, Sandy, an' practice my tactics when you follow. I 'low a
clever man can cross that lane alive."

"We're in a mess out here!" Sandy Rowl complained. "I wish we hadn't
started."

"'Tisn't so bad as all that."

"A loud folly!" Rowl growled.

"Ah, well," Tommy Lark replied, "a telegram's a telegram; an' the need
o' haste----"

"'Twould have kept well enough."

"'Tis not a letter, Sandy."

"Whatever it is, there's no call for two men t' come into peril o'
their lives----"

"You never can tell."

"I'd not chance it a