The dog looked up at him sharply, barked again, and ran forward to scramble up on the bowsprit, where he barked loudly, sniffing uneasily in the intervals.
Two of the Norwegian sailors were forward keeping as sharp a look-out as was possible for the mist; and as Steve followed the dog he was sensible of a peculiar feeling of chill, as if an icy breath was blowing over him.
Then the dog barked again a perfect volley, and in an instant Steve felt his heart stand still, for there was a whirring rush, which rose into quite a roar, mingled with the flapping and beating of wings, and the dog grew almost frantic.
“What is it?” whispered Steve in awe-stricken tones.
“Sea-birds,” said one of the men, calmly enough. “A big field of ice is floating by.”
He had hardly spoken before there was a heavy thud against the ship’s bows, another, and then a heavy thrusting blow which made her quiver from stem to stern and careen over, while above where they stood there was the gleam of ice, a huge mass standing five or six feet above the bulwarks, against which it kept scraping and rubbing and careening the vessel over more and more.
The captain shouted an order to the man at the wheel, and he rammed down the rudder, but there was hardly a breath of air, and the ship had no way on. Then running forward, Captain Marsham shouted to the men to seize hitchers, sweeps, anything, to try and thrust off the vessel from the ice-floe, but all in vain. Vessel and ice continued to grind slowly together, the ship yielding to the mighty pressure of the floe; and as every one had now rushed on deck, it seemed as if the next thing would be to lower the boats and escape before the ice rode right over the Hvalross and sank her in the icy depths.
The men toiled and thrust, but their efforts were utterly without effect, for the two heavy floating bodies had an attraction one for the other, and the grinding noise continued, till it sounded to Steve as if the ice would soon work its way through the stout copper and planks; but a few minutes later three pieces of stout spar were lowered down between the vessel’s hull and the ice to be rubbed into shreds, while the Hvalross, after yielding and careening over foot by foot to the tremendous, pressure, began to right herself till she floated upon an even keel.
If anything the fog was now more dense, making it impossible to take any observations. All they knew was that they were changing their position as they floated steadily along in a heavy current, and that the ice which seemed to hold them fast was gradually revolving, till, from being pointed north-west, the Hvalross’ bowsprit was south-east.
All this time, while the other sailors seemed excited and startled by the risk, the Norwegians were perfectly calm and cool, Johannes expressing his opinion that they would not hurt now, but that the vessel would hug the great floe till the wind sprang up. But Captain Marsham was not so confident of their not coming to harm grinding against an ice rock whose extent, save that it was some twenty feet above the water, it was impossible to compute; and as soon as he had convinced himself that they would not have to take to the boats, he had given orders which resulted in the rattling of iron doors and a dull roar from the engine-room, while the semi-darkness grew more dense as the grey fog-cloud began to be pervaded by another and a blacker cloud, which poured out of the funnel and then spread itself around in the calm, dense air, till the branches, as it were, of some huge tree, of which the vessel’s funnel was the stem, were spread overhead, giving the gleaming ice a peculiarly weird look. For the engineer and his two assistants were hard at work trying to get up steam—a long and tedious task under the circumstances.