"''Twill be the longest way home the night,' said he.
"When a man is sleepy and worn out he can be strangely perverse. I would have my own way; and, to my cost, I was permitted to take it. Billy's father led me down to the landing-stage, put a gaff in my hand, and warned me to be careful—warned me particularly not to take a step without sounding the ice ahead with my gaff; and he brought the little lesson to an end with a wistful, 'I wisht you wouldn't risk it.'
"The tone of his voice, the earnestness and warm feeling with which he spoke, gave me pause. I hesitated; but the light in my surgery window, shining so near at hand, gave me a vision of comfortable rest, and I put the momentary indecision away from me.
"'It is two hundred yards to my surgery by the ice,' I said, 'and it is two miles round the harbour by the road. I'm going by the shortest way.'
"'You'll find it the longest, sir,' said he.
"I repeated my directions as to the treatment of little Billy, then gave the man good-night, and stepped out on the ice, gaff in hand. The three hours following were charged with more terror and despair than, doubtless, any year of my life to come shall know. I am not morbidly afraid of death. It was not that—not the simple, natural fear of death that made me suffer. It was the manner of its coming—in the night, with the harbour folk, all ignorant of my extremity, peacefully sleeping around me—the slow, cruel approach of it, closing in upon every hand, lying all about me, and hidden from me by the night."
The doctor paused. He looked over the quiet water of the harbour.
"Yes," he said, repeating the short, nervous laugh, "it was a narrow escape. The sun of the afternoon—it had shone hot and bright—had weakened the ice, and a strong, gusty wind, such a wind as breaks up the ice every spring, was blowing down the harbour to the sea. It had overcast the sky with thick clouds. The night was dark. Nothing more of the opposite shore than the vaguest outline of the hills—a blacker shadow in a black sky—was to be seen.
"But I had the lamp in the surgery window to guide me, and I pushed out from the shore, resolute and hopeful. I made constant use of my gaff to sound the ice. Without it I should have been lost before I had gone twenty yards. From time to time, in rotten places, it broke through the ice with but slight pressure; then I had to turn to right or left, as seemed best, keeping to the general direction as well as I could all the while.
"As I proceeded, treading lightly and cautiously, I was dismayed to find that the condition of the ice was worse than the worst I had feared.