As yet the pans and hummocks were in reasonably sure contact all the way from Candlestick Cove to Come-Along Point of Amen Island; but the ice was thinning out with accelerating speed—black water disclosing itself in widening gaps—as the compression was relieved. All the while, thus, as Doctor Luke and Billy Topsail made across, the path was diminishing.
In the slant of the wind the ice in the channel of Ships' Run was blown lightly against the Candlestick coast. About the urgent business of its escape to the wide water of Great Yellow Bay the floe rubbed the Candlestick rocks in passing and crushed around the corner of Dead Man's Point.
Near Amen Island, where the wind fell with less force, there was a perilous line of separation. In the lee of the Amen hills—close inshore—the ice was not disturbed: it hugged the coast as before; but outward of this—where the wind dropped down—a lane of water was opening between the inert shore ice and the wind-blown main floe.
As yet the lane was narrow; and there were pans in it—adrift and sluggishly moving away from the Amen shore. When Doctor Luke and Billy Topsail came to this widening breach they were delayed—the course was from pan to pan in a direction determined by the exigency of the moment; and when they had drawn near the coast of Amen—having advanced in a general direction as best they could—they were halted altogether.
And they were not then under Come-Along Point, but on a gathering of heavy Arctic ice, to the north, at the limit of Ships' Run, under that exposed head of Amen, called Deep Water Head, which thrusts itself into the open sea.
"We're stopped, sir," Billy Topsail declared. "We'd best turn back, sir, while there's time."
A way of return was still open. It would be laborious—nothing worse.
"One moment——"
"No chance, sir."