Harbor Tales Down North Part 20

Hanging between the hummock and the pan, the gaff s.h.i.+vering under his weight, Doctor Rolfe slowly subsided toward the hummock. A toe slipped. He paused. It was a grim business. The other foot held. The leg, too, was equal to the strain. He wriggled his toe back to its grip on the edge of the ice. It was an improved foothold. He turned then and began to lift and thrust himself backward. A last thrust on the gaff set him on his haunches on the Arctic hummock, and he thanked Providence and went on. And on--and on! There was a deal of slippery crawling to do, of slow, ticklish climbing. Doctor Rolfe rounded bergs, scaled perilous inclines, leaped crevices.

It was cold as death now. Was it ten below? The gale bit like twenty below.

When the big northeast wind drove the ice back into Anxious Bight and heaped it insh.o.r.e, the pressure had decreased as the ma.s.s of the floe diminished in the direction of the sea. The outermost areas had not felt the impact. They had not folded--had not "raftered." When the wind failed they had subsided toward the open. As they say on the coast, the ice had "gone abroad." It was distributed. And after that the sea had fallen flat; and a vicious frost had caught the floe--widespread now--and frozen it fast. It was six miles from the edge of the raftered ice to the first island of the Spotted Horses.

The flat pans were solid enough, safe and easy going; but this new, connecting ice--the lanes and reaches of it----

Doctor Rolfe's succinct characterization of the condition of Anxious Bight was also keen: "Soft as cheese!"

All that day the sun had fallen hot on the young ice in which the scattered pans of the floe were frozen. Some of the wider patches of green ice had been weakened to the breaking point. Here and there they must have been eaten clear through. Doctor Rolfe contemplated an advance with distaste. And by and by the first brief barrier of new ice confronted him. He must cross it. A black film--the color of water in that light--bridged the way from one pan to another. He would not touch it. He leaped it easily. A few fathoms forward a second s.p.a.ce halted him. Must he put foot on it? With a running start he could----Well, he chose not to touch the second s.p.a.ce, but to leap it.

Soon a third interval stopped him. No man could leap it. He cast about for another way. There was none. He must run across. He scowled.

Disinclination increased. He snarled: "Green ice!" He crossed then like a cat--on tiptoe and swiftly; and he came to the other side with his heart in a flutter. "Whew!"

The ice had yielded without breaking. It had creaked, perhaps; nothing worse. It was what is called "rubber ice." There was more of it; there were miles of it. The nearer the open sea the more widespread was the floe. Beyond--hauling down the Spotted Horses, which lay in the open--the proportion of new ice would be vastly greater. At a trot for the time over the pans, which were flat, and in delicate, mincing little spurts across the bending ice, Doctor Rolfe proceeded. In a confidence that was somewhat flushed--he had rested--he went forward.

And presently, midway of a lane of green ice, he heard a gurgle as the ice bent under his weight. Water washed his boots. He had been on the lookout for holes. This hole he heard--the spurt and gurgle of it. He had not seen it. Safe across, Doctor Rolfe grinned. It was a reaction of relief. "Whew! _Whew!_" he whistled.

By and by he caught ear of the sea breaking under the wind beyond the Little Spotted Horse. He was nearing the limits of the ice. In full moonlight the whitecaps flashed news of a tumultuous open. A rumble and splash of breakers came down with the gale from the point of the island. It indicated that the sea was working in the pa.s.sage between the Spotted Horses and Blow-me-down d.i.c.k of the Ragged Run coast. The waves would run under the ice, would lift it and break it. In this way the sea would eat its way through the pa.s.sage. It would destroy the young ice. It would break the pans to pieces and rub them to slush.

Doctor Rolfe must make the Little Spotted Horse and cross the pa.s.sage between the island and the Ragged Run coast. Whatever the issue of haste, he must carry on and make the best of a bad job. Otherwise he would come to Tickle-my-Ribs, between the Little Spotted Horse and Blow-me-Down d.i.c.k of Ragged Run, and be marooned from the main sh.o.r.e.

And there was another reason: it was immediate and desperately urgent.

As the sea was biting off the ice in Tickle-my-Ribs, so, too, it was encroaching upon the body of the ice in Anxious Bight. Anxious Bight was breaking up. Acres of ice were wrenched from the field at a time and then broken up by the sea. What was the direction of this swift melting? It might take any direction. And a survey of the sky troubled Doctor Rolfe. All this while the light had diminished. It was failing still. It was failing faster. There was less of the moon. By and by it would be wholly obscured.

A man would surely lose his life on the ice in thick weather--on one or other of the reaches of new ice. And thereabouts the areas of young ice were wider. To tiptoe across the yielding film of these dimly visible stretches was instantly and dreadfully dangerous. It was horrifying. A man took his life in his hand every time he left a pan.

Doctor Rolfe was not insensitive. He began to sweat--not with labor but with fear. When the ice bent under him he gasped and held his breath; and he came each time to the solid refuge of a pan with his teeth set, his face contorted, his hands clenched--a s.h.i.+ver in the small of his back.

To achieve safety once, however, was not to win a final relief; it was merely to confront, in the same circ.u.mstances, a precisely similar peril. Doctor Rolfe was not physically exhausted; every muscle that he had was warm and alert. Yet he was weak; a repet.i.tion of suspense had unnerved him. A full hour of this, and sometimes he chattered and shook in a nervous chill. In the meantime he had approached the rocks of the Little Spotted Horse.

In the lee of the Little Spotted Horse the ice had gathered as in a back current. It was close packed alongsh.o.r.e to the point of the island. Between this solidly frozen press of pans and the dissolving field in Anxious Bight there had been a lane of ruffled open water before the frost fell. It measured perhaps fifty yards. It was now black and still, sheeted with new ice which had been delayed in forming by the ripple of that exposed situation. Doctor Rolfe had encountered nothing as doubtful. He paused on the brink. A long, thin line of solid pan ice, ghostly white in the dusk beyond, was attached to the rocks of the Little Spotted Horse. It led all the way to Tickle-my-Ribs. Doctor Rolfe must make that line of solid ice. He must cross the wide lane of black, delicately frozen new ice that lay between and barred his way.

He waited for the moon. When the light broke--a thin, transient gleam--he started. A few fathoms forth the ice began to yield. A moment later he stopped short and recoiled. There was a hole--gaping wide and almost under his feet. He stopped. The water overflowed and the ice cracked. He must not stand still. To avoid a second hole he twisted violently to the right and almost plunged into a third opening. It seemed the ice was rotten from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e. And it was a long way across. Doctor Rolfe danced a zigzag toward the pan ice under the cliffs, spurting forward and retreating and swerving. He did not pause; had he paused he would have dropped through. When he was within two fathoms of the pan ice a foot broke through and tripped him flat on his face. With his weight thus distributed he was momentarily held up. Water squirted and gurgled out of the break--an inch of water, forming a pool. Doctor Rolfe lay still and expectant in this pool.

Dolly West's mother still sat by the kitchen fire. It was long past midnight now.

Once more Bad-Weather Tom tiptoed in from the frosty night. "Is she sleepin' still?" he whispered.

"Hus.h.!.+ She've jus' toppled off again. She's havin' a deal o' pain, Tom. An' she've been bleedin' again."

"Put her down on the bed, dear."

The woman shook her head. "I'm afeared 'twould start the wounds, Tom.

Any sign of un yet, Tom?"

"Not yet."

"He'll come soon."

"No; 'tis not near time. 'Twill be dawn afore he----"

"Soon, Tom."

"He'll be delayed by snow. The moon's near gone. 'Twill be black dark in half an hour. I felt a flake o' snow as I come in. An' he'll maybe wait at Mad Harry----"

"He's comin' by the Bight, Tom."

Dolly stirred, cried out, awakened with a start, and lifted her bandaged head a little. She did not open her eyes. "Is that you, doctor, sir?"

"Hus.h.!.+" the mother whispered. "'Tis not the doctor yet."

"When----"

"He's comin'."

"I'll take a look," said Tom. He went out again and stumbled down the path to Blow-me-Down d.i.c.k by Tickle-my-Ribs.

Doctor Rolfe lay still and expectant in the pool of water near the pan ice and rocks of the Little Spotted Horse. He waited. Nothing happened. Presently he ventured delicately to take off a mitten, to extend his hand, to sink his fingernails in the ice and try to draw himself forward. It was a failure. His fingernails were too short. He could merely scratch the ice. He reflected that if he did not concentrate his weight--that if he kept it distributed--he would not break through. And once more he tried to make use of his fingernails.

It turned out that the nails of the other hand were longer. Doctor Rolfe managed to gain half an inch before they slipped. They slipped again--and again and again. It was hopeless. Doctor Rolfe lay still, pondering.

Presently he shot his gaff toward the pan ice, to be rid of the inc.u.mbrance of it, and lifted himself on his palms and toes. By this the distribution of his weight was not greatly disturbed. It was not concentrated upon one point. It was divided by four and laid upon four points. And there were no fearsome consequences. It was a hopeful experiment.

Doctor Rolfe stepped by inches on his hands toward the pan ice--dragging his toes. In this way he came to the line of solid ice under the cliffs of the Little Spotted Horse and had a clear path forward. Whereupon he picked up his gaff, and set out for the point of the Little Spotted Horse and the pa.s.sage of Tickle-my-Ribs. He was heartened.

Tickle-my-Ribs was heaving. The sea had by this time eaten its way clear through the pa.s.sage 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 d.i.c.k 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 pa.s.sage 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 Tom West was not on the lookout when Doctor Rolfe opened the kitchen door at Ragged Run Harbor and strode in with the air of a man who had survived difficulties and was proud of it. Bad-weather Tom West was sitting by the fire, his face in his hands; and the mother of Dolly West--with Dolly still restlessly asleep in her arms--was rocking, rocking, as before.

And Doctor Rolfe set to work--in a way so gentle, with a voice so persuasive, with a hand so tender and sure, with a skill and wisdom so keen, that little Dolly West, who was brave enough in any case, as you know, yielded the additional patience and courage which the simple means at hand for her relief required; and Doctor Rolfe laved Dolly West's blue eyes until she could see again, and sewed up her wounds that night so that no scar remained; and in the broad light of the next day picked out grains of powder until not a single grain was left to disfigure the child.