Caius held his horse still upon the edge of the ice, too well diverted with the activity on the shore to leave it at once. Behind the animated scene and the row of gray snow-thatched sheds, the shore rose white and lonely. Except for the foot-tracks on the road by which they had come, and the peak of the lighthouse within sight, it would have seemed that a colony had suddenly sprung to life in an uninhabited Arctic region.
It was from this slope above the sheds that Caius now heard himself hailed by loud shouting, and, looking up, he saw that O'Shea had come there to overlook the scene below. Some women stood around him. Caius supposed that Madame Le Maître was there.
O'Shea made a trumpet of his hands and shouted that Caius must not take his horse upon the ice that day, for the beast would be frightened and do himself harm.
Caius was affronted. The horse was not his, truly, but he believed he knew how to take care of it, yet, as it belonged to a woman, he could not risk disobeying this uncivil prohibition. Although he was accustomed to the rude authority which O'Shea assumed whenever he wished to be disagreeable, Caius had only learned to take it with an outward appearance of indifference—his mind within him always chafed; this time the affront to his vanity was worse because he believed that Madame Le Maître had prompted, or certainly permitted, the insult. It did not soothe him to think that, with a woman's nervousness, she might have more regard for his safety than that of the horse. The brightness died out of the beautiful day, and in a lofty mood of ill-used indifference he assured himself that a gentleman could take little interest in such barbarous sport as seal-hunting. At any rate, it would go on for many a day. He certainly had not the slightest intention of dismounting at O'Shea's command in order to go to the hunt.
Caius held his horse as quiet as he could for some ten minutes, feigning an immense interest in the occupation of the women; then leisurely curvetted about, and set his horse at a light trot along the ice close by the shore.
He rode hastily past the only place where he could have ascended the bank, and after that he had no means of going home until he had rounded the island and returned by the lagoon. The distance up to the end was seven miles. Caius rode on under the lonely cliffs where the gulls wintered, and threading his way upon smooth places on the ice, came, in the course of not much more than an hour, up to the end of the cliffs, crossed the neck of the sand-bar, and followed the inward shore till he got back to the first road.
Now, on this end of the island very few families lived. Caius had only been upon the road he was about to traverse once or twice. The reason it was so little built upon was that the land here belonged entirely to the farm of Madame Le Maître, which stretched in a narrow strip for a couple of miles from O'Shea's dwelling to the end of the island. The only point of interest which this district had for Caius was a cottage which had been built in a very sheltered nook for the accommodation of two women, whose business it was to care for the poultry which was kept here. Caius had been told that he might always stop at this lodge for a drink of milk or beer or such a lunch as it could afford, and being thirsty by reason of hard riding and ill-temper, he now tried to find the path that led to it.