“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 84 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 driving force of the wind, but the pressure was relieved. The pans 85 fell away from one another. Lakes and lanes of water opened up. The pan upon which Bagg chanced to find himself in the great break-up soon floated free. There was now no escape from it.
Bagg retreated from the edge, for the seas began to break there.
“Wisht I was ’ome again,” he sobbed.
This time he did not look towards England, but wistfully back to Ruddy Cove.
The gale wasted away in the night. The next day was warm and sunny on all that coast. An ice-pack hung offshore from Fortune Harbour. In the afternoon it began to creep in with a light wind. The first pans struck the coast at dusk. The folk of the place were on the Head, on the lookout for the sign of a herd of seal. Just before night fell they spied a black speck, as far out from shore as their eyes could see.
“They’ll be seals out there the morrow,” the men were all agreed.