"I think we may as well make fast to it," I heard the captain say; and, a moment later, the order was given to get out the ice-anchors.
Wade and I then went up. "The Curlew" lay broadside against the floe. The wind, with a current caused perhaps by the tide, held us up to it so forcibly, that the vessel careened slightly. Weymouth and Hobbs were getting down on to the ice with the ice-chisels in their hands, and, going off twenty or thirty yards, began to cut holes. The ice-anchors were then thrown over on to the floe. To each of them was bent one of our two-and-a-half-inch hawsers. The anchors themselves were, as will probably be remembered, simply large, strong grapnels. Dragging them along to the holes, they were hooked into the ice, and the hawsers drawn in tight from deck. Planks, secured to the rail by lines, were then run down to bear the chafe. This was our process of anchoring to ice. Sometimes three or four grapnels were used when the tendency to swing off was greater. To-night there was so much floating ice all about, that the swell was almost entirely broken, and the schooner lay as quiet as if in a country lake. A watch was set, and we turned in again.
Breakfast at six. Fog thick and flat on the ice. The breeze in the night, blowing against the schooner, had turned the ice-field completely round. Occasionally a cake of ice would bump up against us. We could hear them grinding together all about; yet the wind was light, otherwise we might have had heavier thumps. About seven o'clock we heard a splashing out along the floe.
"Seals!" remarked the captain.
"Bet you, I'll have one of those fellows!" exclaimed Donovan, catching up a pike-pole, and dropping over the rail.
"Can he get near enough to kill them with a pole, suppose?" Wade queried.
"That's the way the sealers kill them," replied the captain. "Send the men out on the ice with nothing but clubs and knives. The seals can't move very fast: nothing but their flippers to help themselves with. The men run along the edges of the ice, and get between them and the water. The seals make for the water; and the men knock them on the heads with clubs, and then butcher them."
"It's a horribly bloody business, I should think," said Raed.
"Well, not so bad as a Brighton slaughter-pen, quite," rejoined the captain. "But I never much admired it, I must confess."
Just then Donovan came racing out of the fog, and, jumping for the rail, drew his legs up as if he believed them in great peril.