They waited in dull patience for the wind to blow the floe against the coast.
It began to snow—a thick fall, by-and-by: the flakes fine and dry as dust. A woolly curtain shut coast and far-off sea from view. The wind, rising still, was charged with stinging frost. It veered; but it blew sufficiently true to the favorable direction: the ice still made ponderously for the shore, reeling in the swell.... The great pan bearing Salim Awad and Tommy Hand lagged; it was soon left behind: to leeward the figures of the skipper, the cook, the first hand, and the crew turned to shadows—dissolved in the cloud of snow. The cook’s young son and the love-lorn peddler from Washington Street alone peopled a world of ice and water, all black and white: heaving, confined. They huddled, cowering from the wind, waiting—helpless, patient: themselves detached from the world of ice and water, which clamored round about, unrecognized. The spirit of each returned: the one to the Cedars of Lebanon, the other to Lobster Cove; and in each place there was a mother. In plights like this the hearts of men and children turn to distant mothers; for in all the world there is no rest serene—no rest remembered—like the first rest the spirits of men know.
When dusk began to dye the circumambient cloud, the pan of ice was close inshore; the shape of the cliffs—a looming shadow—was vague in the snow beyond. There was no longer any roar of surf; the first of the floe, now against the coast, had smothered the breakers. A voice, coming faintly into the wind, apprised Tommy Hand that his father was ashore.... But the pan still moved sluggishly.
Tommy Hand shivered.
“Ah, Tom-ee!” Salim Awad said, anxiously. “Run! Jump! You weel have—what say?—cotch seek. Ay—cotch thee seek. Eh? R-r-run, Tom-ee!”
“Ay, ay,” Tommy Hand answered. “I’ll be jumpin’ about a bit, I’m thinkin’, t’ keep warm—as me father bid me do.”
“Queek!” cried Salim, laughing.