No Newfoundlander ventures out upon the ice without his gaff—a nine-foot pole, made of light, tough dog-wood, and iron-shod. It was with his own true gaff that Billy felt his way out of Duck Foot Cove as the night cleared away.
The sea had abated somewhat with the wind. In the bay beyond the cove, the broken ice was freezing into one vast, rough sheet, solid as the coast rocks on the pans, but unsafe, and deceptive over the channels between. The course was down the bay, skirting the shore, to Creepy Bluff, then overland to Ruddy Cove, which is a port of the open sea: in all, twenty-one miles, with the tail of the gale to beat against.
"Feel every step o' the way till the light comes strong," had been old Saul Ride's last word to the boy. "Strike hard with your gaff before you put your foot down."
Billy kept his gaff before him—feeling his way much as a blind man taps the pavement as he goes along a city street. The search for solid ice led him this way and that, but his progress towards Creepy Bluff, the shadowy outline of which he soon could see, steadily continued. He surmised that it was still blowing hard in the open, beyond the shelter of the islands; and he wondered if the wind would sweep him off his feet when he essayed to cross Sloop Run, down which it ran, unbroken, from the sea to the bluff.
"Her Majesty's mail!" he muttered, echoing the thrill in the mailman's voice. "Her Majesty's mail!"
When the light was stronger—but it was not yet break of day—he thought to make greater haste by risking more. Now and again he chanced himself on a suspicious-looking black sheet. Now and again he ran nimbly over many yards of rubber ice, which yielded and groaned, but did not break. Often he ventured where Arch Butt would not have dared take his massive body. All this he did, believing always that he should not delay the Gull Arm mailman, who might even then be waiting for him in Ruddy Cove.
But when he had covered six miles of the route, he came to a wide channel which was not yet frozen over. It lay between two large pans. How far he might have to diverge from his course to cross without risk, he could not tell. He was impressed with the fact that, once across, the way lay clear before him—a long stretch of solid ice.
"Sure, I must cross here," he thought.