And in those brief moments the space between the walls had grown narrower, till the yards nearly touched on either side, and the loose fragments that fell from the rugged masses on the right kept on splashing the water up on to the deck.
Just then Skene uttered a fierce bark at the coming wall, Johannes gave Steve a sharp look, and laid his hand upon the gunwale of the boat, drawing it down, the men stepped close to the shrouds, and the captain darted a sharp glance from the bridge at the top of the floe, which was to be their asylum.
Then, roaring loudly, the ice-laden wave struck the poop with a tremendous crash, lifted the vessel, and bore her onward on the breast of the furious cataract, onward and onward along the narrow passage, which seemed to open out before the rushing water. The yards scraped here and scraped there along the cliff-sides; the ice pounded them, and gave forth a peculiar, hollow, echoing roar, but, swiftly almost as an arrow, they were borne along, with the steam whistle shrieking as if the unfortunate boat were in agony.
A minute.
It seemed to all an hour of horror too terrible to be borne, and then the captain, with both hands to his mouth, roared:
“Engineer! below! stop that escape of steam!”
The man darted to the engine-room hatch, and disappeared, just as the walls behind them closed in with a deafening crash as of a thousand thunder peals, the water rushed by them as if shot from some gigantic pipe, and the Hvalross was borne forward at a speed such as she had never half achieved before. Then, as the walls behind continued to close, the vessel glided into open water, which grew clearer and clearer right ahead, where it was running like some mighty mill-race a mile wide northward, between the ice and the great promontory, which jutted out from the land.
“Steve!” said the doctor, with his lips to his young companion’s ear; “and they say the days of miracles are past!”
Without another word he went below into the cabin, and Steve felt his hand grasped from above. He looked up to see that it was Johannes leaning down from the boat.
“We are saved, my dear lad,” he said in a voice deep with emotion; and as if he, too, could participate in the general feeling of thankfulness, Skene burst into a joyful fit of barking and leaped right down upon the deck.