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. 77
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.