In the meantime they had approached the rocks of the Little Spotted Horse.
They rested a moment.
"Now for it, boy!" said the Doctor, then.
"Ay, ay, sir!"
"Sorry you came, Billy?"
Billy was a truthful boy—and no hero of the melodrama.
"I wisht we was across, sir," said he.
"So do I," the Doctor agreed. "Come," he added, heartily; "we'll go across!"
In the lee of the Little Spotted Horse the ice had gathered as in a back-current. It was close packed alongshore to the point of the island. Between this solidly frozen press of pans and the dissolving field in Anxious Bight there had been a lane of ruffled open water before the frost fell. It measured perhaps fifty yards. It was now black and still—sheeted with new ice which had been delayed in forming by the ripple of that exposed situation.