No sail fluttered between—a sail might be confused with the colour of the ice, however, or not yet risen into view; but by and by, when the misty white circle of the sun was dropping low, the boy gave up hope, without yielding altogether to despair. There would be no skiff along that day, said he; but there would surely be a sail to-morrow, never fear—Skipper Thomas and a Tight Cove crew.
In the light airs the floe had spread. There was more open water than there had been. Fragments of ice had broken from the first vast pans into which Schooner Bay ice had been split in the break-up. These lesser, lighter pans moved faster than the greater ones; and the wind from the north—blown up to a steady breeze by this time—was driving them slowly south against the windward edge of the more sluggish fields in that direction.
At sunset—the west was white and frosty—a small pan caught Billy Topsail's eye and instantly absorbed his attention. It had broken from the field on which they were marooned and was under way on a diagonal across a quiet lane of black water, towards a second great field lying fifty fathoms or somewhat less to the south.
Were Billy Topsail and the boy aboard that pan the wind would ferry them away from the horrible menace of the dogs. It was a small pan—an area of about four hundred square feet; yet it would serve. It was not more than fifteen fathoms distant. Billy could swim that far—he was pretty sure he could swim that far, the endeavour being unencumbered; but the boy—a little fellow and a cripple—could not swim at all.
Billy jumped up.
"We've got t' leave this pan," said he, "an' forthwith too."
"Have you a notion, b'y?"
Billy laid off his seal-hide overjacket. He gathered up the dogs' traces—long strips of seal leather by means of which the dogs had drawn the komatik, a strip to a dog; and he began to knot them together—talking fast the while to distract the boy from the incident of peculiar peril in the plan.
The little pan in the lane—said he—would be a clever ferry. He would swim out and crawl aboard. It would be no trick at all. He would carry one end of the seal-leather line. Teddy Brisk would retain the other. Billy pointed out a ridge of ice against which Teddy Brisk could brace his sound leg. They would pull, then—each against the other; and presently the little pan would approach and lie alongside the big pan—there was none too much wind for that—and they would board the little pan and push off, and drift away with the wind, and leave the dogs to make the best of a bad job.
It would be a slow affair, though—hauling in a pan like that; the light was failing too—flickering out like a candle end—and there must be courage and haste—or failure.