four o'clock
There was no doctor in Ragged Run Harbor ; there was a doctor at Afternoon Arm , however -- across Anxious Bight . Terry West avoided the rotten ice of the Bight and took the ` longshore trail by way of Mad Harry and Thank-the-Lord . At noon he was past Mad Harry , his little legs wearing well and his breath coming easily through his expanded nostrils . He had not paused ; and at four o'clock -- still on a dogtrot -- he had hauled down the chimney smoke of Thank-the-Lord and was bearing up for Afternoon Arm . * * * * * Early dusk caught him shortcutting the doubtful ice of Thank-the-Lord Cove ; and half an hour later , midway of the passage to Afternoon Arm , with two miles left to accomplish -- dusk falling thick and cold , then , a frosty wind blowing -- Creep Head of the Arm looming black and solid -- he dropped through the ice and vanished . Returning from a professional call at Tumble Tickle in clean , sunlit weather , with nothing more tedious than eighteen miles of wilderness trail and rough floe ice behind him , Doctor Rolfe was chagrined to discover himself fagged out . He had come heartily down the trail from Tumble Tickle , but on the ice in the shank of the day -- there had been eleven miles of the floe -- he had lagged and complained under what was indubitably the weight of his sixty-three years .