He certainly had not the slightest intention of dismounting at O'Shea's command in order to go to the hunt.
Caius held his horse as quiet as he could for some ten minutes, feigning an immense interest in the occupation of the women; then leisurely curvetted about, and set his horse at a light trot along the ice close by the shore.
He rode hastily past the only place where he could have ascended the bank, and after that he had no means of going home until he had rounded the island and returned by the lagoon.

The distance up to the end was seven miles.

Caius rode on under the lonely cliffs where the gulls wintered, and threading his way upon smooth places on the ice, came, in the course of not much more than an hour, up to the end of the cliffs, crossed the neck of the sand-bar, and followed the inward shore till he got back to the first road.
Now, on this end of the island very few families lived.

Caius had only been upon the road he was about to traverse once or twice.

The reason it was so little built upon was that the land here belonged entirely to the farm of Madame Le Maitre, which stretched in a narrow strip for a couple of miles from O'Shea's dwelling to the end of the island.