It did indeed look as though the bay would soon be cleared of ice, for the tide or current and the wind were slowly but surely moving the ice away from the land. Already a stretch of fifty feet of water separated the igloos from the shore, and along the beach tiny waves were lapping at the shingle. For the first time in many months, the boys felt the schooner gently rising and falling beneath their feet. But Tom and Jim did not know the treacherous Arctic weather. Two nights later they were aroused by shouts and cries, the sound of hurrying feet, and crashing shivering blows that shook the schooner from stem to stern. At first they thought the Narwhal had gone adrift and was on the rocks. Hurrying into their garments they rushed on deck to gaze upon a terrific, wild and magnificent sight. The wind had shifted and was blowing half a gale from the east and the broken ice, that had been drifting out of the bay for the past three days, was now being driven back.
Tossing on the waves, the great masses of gleaming ice came in, grinding together, crashing like thunder as one collided with another, bumping and roaring as they lifted and fell upon the seas. In a vast solid rampart, the upended jagged cakes were approaching the Narwhal, and already she was surrounded by scores of the cakes—huge, sharp-edged bits of floe twenty feet or more in thickness, and hurled like battering rams by wind and waves.
Instantly, the boys realized the peril the schooner was in. Each time a great cake was flung against the stout ice sheathing of her hull, the Narwhal shivered and trembled. It seemed impossible that any vessel could withstand the steady buffeting, the constant impacts, of the tossing cakes.
Shouting, and yelling, the men and the Eskimos labored, striving to ward off the ice with poles, by lowering great rope fenders over the sides, and by paying out cable, but their puny efforts made no impression on the irresistible oncoming ice. Presently, however, the boys noticed that there were fewer shocks, that the blows seemed less severe and then they saw the reason. The first cakes of ice had reached the shore, others had piled upon them, back of these the oncoming ice was checked and, unable to move farther, the countless thousands of heaving, crashing, grinding cakes were jammed together and the schooner was locked fast in their embrace.
“Gosh! that was a narrow escape!” cried Jim. “But I guess we’re all right now.”
“All right!” burst out Mr. Kemp. “Here’s where we’re a-goin’ to get it good an’ plenty. If the Narwhal ain’t stove it’ll be nothin’ short of a miracle.”
For a moment the boys could not see where the danger lurked and every one was too busy to answer the questions they longed to ask. But presently they understood. The gale, the heavy seas outside the bay and the tide were all pushing with terrific force against that vast mass of millions of tons of ice, and the schooner was gripped within it as in the jaws of a titanic vise. Only her hull of oak and pine, a mere egg shell in that stupendous field of ice, lay between the cakes, and no fabric built by human hands could withstand that awful pressure.
With sickening creaks the timbers and planks began to give. With horrified eyes the boys saw the stout sides and bulwarks bending and buckling inwards. The heavy oak rail parted, splintered and ripped like a match stick. With a report like a gunshot the decks sprang into the air and rose in a steep hill-like ridge above the shattered bulwarks.
“Gosh, Jim, it’s all over with the old Narwhal!” cried Tom, scarcely able to realize that the stout old schooner had met her fate at last. “Now what will we do?”