Bill o' Burnt Bay's party was landed first. Billy Topsail and Tim Tuttle were members of it; and, as usual, Archie Armstrong attached himself to it. As the _Dictator_ steamed away to land the second crew, and, thence, still further away to land the third, Bill led his men on a trot for the pack, which lay about a mile from the water's edge.
"'Tis a queer day, this," Bill observed to the boys, who trotted in his wake.
"Is it t' snow, or is it not? Can you answer me that? Sure, I most always can tell that little thing, but t'-day I can't."
"'Tis like snow," Billy replied, puzzled, "an' again 'tisn't. 'Tis queer, that!"
"I hopes the captain keeps the ship at hand," said Bill. "'Tis not t' my taste t' spend a night on the floe in a storm."
To be lost in a blizzard is a dreaded danger, and not at all an uncommon experience. Many crews, lost from the ship in a blinding storm, have been carried out to sea with the floe, and never heard of afterwards. Bill o' Burnt Bay lost his own father in that way, and himself had had two narrow escapes from the same fate. So he scanned the sky anxiously, not only as he ran along at the head of his sixty men, but from time to time through the day, until the excitement of the hunt put all else out of his head.
[Illustration: "LASH YOUR TOWS, B'YS," SAID BILL. "LEAVE THE REST GO."]
It was a profitable hunt. The men laboured diligently and rapidly. So intent on the work in hand were they that none observed the darkening sky and the gusts of wind that broke from behind the rocky coast. Thus, towards evening, when the work was over save the sculping and lashing, dusk caught them unaware. Bill o' Burnt Bay looked up to find that the snow was flying, that it was black as ink in the northeast, and that the wind was blowing in long, angry gusts.
"Men," he cried, "did you ever see a sky like that?"
The men watched the heavy clouds in the northeast rise and swiftly spread.
"Make haste with the sculpin'," Bill ordered. "They's wonderful heavy weather comin' up. I mind me a time when a blizzard come out of a sky like that."
The dusk grew deeper, the snow fell thicker, the wind rose; and all this Bill observed while he worked. Groups of men lashed their tows and started off for the edge of the floe where the steamer was to return for them.