No doubt they had been hailing, but the noise of the paddles stopped any one from hearing, while the coming evening prevented any one from seeing them till they were close on to us, and the little boat gliding along the ship’s side in company with the ice.
The boatman seemed to have lost his nerve, or else he would have tried to hook on with a hitcher; but he stood quite still, and as we all looked, one of the men who had been keeping off the ice made a dash at the boat with his hook, but missed her; and the next instant there was a loud shriek and a crash, and the little boat and the two men were out of sight under the great paddle-wheel of the steamer.
I dashed to the skylight, and shouted “Stop her!” to my mate, and the paddle-wheels ceased going round; when I followed all on deck to the side abaft the paddle-box, and in the dim light I could just see the swamped boat come up and pass astarn of us, floating amongst the ice.
“Here, get out a boat!” cried the captain, and directly after four of us were rowing about amongst the ice, trying to find the two poor fellows who had been beaten down. Now we tried one way, and now another, and always with the great thick sheets of ice grinding against us, and forcing the boat about; while I could not help thinking what a poor chance the best of swimmers would have had in the icy water, amongst the sharp, ragged-edged floes that were sweeping by.
It had got to be almost dark now, and the steamer lay some distance off, so that we could only see her by the lights hung out; when just as we had made up our minds that nothing more could be done, and were turning the boat’s head, there came a hail from the steamer for us to return.
And that returning was not an easy job in the darkness, with the ice making the little boat shiver at every stroke of the oars, for it seemed to grow thicker and heavier all round us, so that we had to row carefully to keep from being overset. Till I saw it, I could hardly believe in such huge lumps of ice being anywhere out of the Polar seas; for here in England one would not expect to see pieces of ice lying stranded on the shore—pieces eight or ten feet high. But there, in the Humber, in a severe winter, a great quantity of sheet ice comes down with the tide, and being washed one piece over the other, they mount up and up, and freeze together till they get quite a height, while I have often seen small schooners and billy-boys froze in, and even raised right out of the water, so that they stood on a little hill of ice, which supported the middle, while you could walk under the keel of the fore part.
After a good deal of pushing and warding off blows, we got aside the steamer at last, when the captain shouted to us to row all along, for he thought once he had heard some one shout for help. So we put her gently alongside, round the paddle-box, and were going forward a bit, when I heard a shout close by me as made my blood turn cold.
But I was myself again next moment, and I got hold of a boat-hook and hitched on alongside.
“Throw us a rope,” I says; and they let down the tackle, when we hooked on, and directly after they had us hauled up to the davits, when I jumped on deck.
“Lend a hand here with a lanthorn,” I says, running up to the paddle-box.