But it was not easy for everybody to obey this command. The wet decks were now covered with a thin surface of ice, and those who had been standing still for a few moments found it difficult to release their shoes from the flooring of the deck, while several of the men slipped down as they made their way to the forward hatch. As for Sarah Block, she found it impossible to move at all. Her shoes were of a peculiar kind, the soles being formed of thick felt, and these, having been soaked with water, had frozen firmly to the deck. She tried to make a step and almost fell over.
“Heavens and earth!” she screamed; “don't let this boat go down and leave me standing outside!”
Her husband and two men tried to release her, but they could not disengage her shoes from the deck; so Sammy was obliged to loosen her shoe-strings, and then he and another man lifted her out of her shoes and carried her to the hatchway, whence she very speedily hurried below.
Everybody was now inside the vessel, the hatches were tightly closed, and the Dipsey began to sink. When she had descended to the comparatively temperate depths of the sea, and her people found themselves in her warm and well-lighted compartments, there was a general disposition to go about and shake hands with each other. Some of them even sang little snatches of songs, so relieved were they to get down out of that horrible upper air.
“Of course I shall never see my shoes again,” said Mrs. Block; “and they were mighty comfortable ones, too. I suppose, when they have been down here awhile in this water, which must be almost lukewarmish compared to what it is on top, they will melt loose and float up; and then, Sammy, suppose they lodge on some of that ice and get frozen for a thousand years! Good gracious! It sets me all of a creep to think of that happenin' to my shoes, that I have been wearin' every day! Don't you want a cup of tea?”
“It's a great pity,” thought Sammy to himself, “that it wasn't that Pole that had his feet frozen to the deck. The rest of us might have been lucky enough not to have noticed him as the boat went down.”
“We ought to get a name for that body of water up there,” said Mr. Gibbs, as he was writing out his report of the day's adventures. “Shall we call it 'Lake Clewe'?”
“Oh, don't do that!” exclaimed Sammy Block. “Mr. Clewe's too good a man to have his name tacked on to that hole. If you want to name it, why don't you call it 'Lake Shiver'?”
“That is a good name,” answered Mr. Gibbs; and so it was called.