ove straight away in the direction in which Uncle
Tommy Luff had said that England lay.

Notwithstanding the comfort and plenty of his place with Aunt Ruth
Rideout and Uncle Ezekiel, Bagg still longed to go back to the gutters
of London.

"I want to go 'ome," he often said to Billy Topsail and Jimmie Grimm.

"What for?" Billy once demanded.

"Don't know," Bagg replied. "I jus' want to go 'ome."

At last Bagg formed a plan.

CHAPTER VIII

_In Which Bagg, Unknown to Ruddy Cove, Starts for Home,
and, After Some Difficulty, Safely Gets There_

Uncle Tommy Luff, coming up the hill one day when the ice was jammed
against the coast and covered the sea as far as sight carried, was
stopped by Bagg at the turn to Squid Cove.

"I say, mister," said Bagg, "which way was you tellin' me Lun'on was
from 'ere?"

Uncle Tommy pointed straight out to the ice-covered sea.

"That way?" asked Bagg.

"Straight out o' the tickle with the meetin'-house astarn."

"Think a bloke could ever get there?" Bagg inquired.

Uncle Tommy laughed. "If he kep' on walkin' he'd strike it some time,"
he answered.

"Sure?" Bagg demanded.

"If he kep' on walkin'," Uncle Tommy repeated, smiling.

This much may be said of the ice: the wind which carries it inshore
inevitably sweeps it out to sea again, in an hour or a day or a week,
as it may chance. The whole pack--the wide expanse of enormous
fragments of fields and glaciers--is in the grip of the wind, which,
as all men know, bloweth where it listeth. A nor'east gale sets it
grinding against the coast, but when the wind veers to the west the
pack moves out and scatters.

If a man is caught in that great rush and heaving, he has nothing
further to do with his own fate but wait. He escapes if he has
strength to survive until the wind blows the ice against the coast
again--not else. When the Newfoundlander starts out to the seal hunt
he makes sure, in so far as he can, that no change in the wind is
threatened.

Uncle Ezekiel Rideout kept an eye on the weather that night.

"Be you goin', b'y?" said Ruth, looking up from her weaving.

Ezekiel had just come in from Lookout Head, where the watchers had
caught sight of the seals, swarming far off in the shadows.

"They's seals out there," he said, "but I don't know as us'll go the
night. 'Tis like the wind'll haul t' the west."

"What do Uncle Tommy Luff say?"

"That 'twill haul t' the west an' freshen afore midnight."