s in the lee of a
clumper, where he was comfortably sheltered. He was still warm--in a
glow of heat, indeed--and his hope was still with him. So far he had
suffered from nothing save weariness. So he began to dream of what he
would do when he got home, just as all men do when they come near,
once again, to that old place where they were born. The wind was now
a gale, blowing furiously; the pack was groaning in its outlying
parts.

"Nothink t' nobody," Bagg grumbled, on his way once more.

Then he stopped dead--in terror. He had heard the breaking of an
ice-pan--a great clap and rumble, vanishing in the distance. The noise
was repeated, all roundabout--bursting from everywhere, rising to a
fearful volume: near at hand, a cracking; far off, a continuing roar.
The pack was breaking up. Each separate part was torn from another,
and the noise of the rending was great. Each part ground against its
neighbour on every side. The weaker pans were crushed like egg-shells.
Then the whole began to feel the heave of the sea.

"It's a earthquake!" thought Bagg. "I better 'urry up."

He looked back over the way he had come--searching the shadows for
Ruddy Cove. But the coast was lost to sight.

"Must be near acrost, now," he thought. "I'll 'urry up."

So he turned his back on Ruddy Cove and ran straight out to sea, for
he thought that England was nearer than the coast he had left. He was
now upon a pan, both broad and thick--stout enough to withstand the
pressure of the pack. It was a wide field of ice, which the cold of
the far North, acting through many years, it may be, had made strong.
Elsewhere the pans were breaking--were lifting themselves out of the
press and falling back in pieces--were being ground to finest
fragments. This mighty confusion of noise and wind and snow and night,
and the upheaval of the whole world roundabout, made the soul of Bagg
shiver within him. It surpassed the terrors of his dreams.

"Guess I never _will_ get 'ome," thought he.

Soon he came to the edge of the pan. Beyond, where the pack was in
smaller blocks, the sea was swelling beneath it. The ice was all
heaving and swaying. He dared not venture out upon this shifting
ground. So he ran up and down, seeking a path onward; but he
discovered none. Meantime, the parts of the pack had fallen into
easier positions; the noise of crunching, as the one ground against
the other, had somewhat abated. The ice continued its course outward,
under the dri