Ice like this closes very suddenly, and if the captain of an exploring ship is not very clever, he may get caught, and a week’s imprisonment counts against a ship when making a voyage.
Sailing in a pack like this, a vessel to a landsman would seem to be in a very dangerous position.
She may be, though no one on board appears to think so. The ice is here, the ice is there, the ice is all around; flat bergs, like what you meet in the north; pancake ice, lakes of slush, and those terrible masses, or square mountains of land-ice—a characteristic feature of this country—with caved perpendicular sides, striated on the horizontal, or, if they have been melted by the sun at one side, oblique, and glittering gorgeously blue, green, or paley white, in the sun’s rays.
But all, big or small, covered with snow, so that their very whiteness dazzles the eyes. But at this season there were birds everywhere, and seals of many species. The penguins, I need hardly add, were a very curious sight, as they stood or staggered about on the low flat bergs. Our heroes saw some sea-elephants, though I believe these, as a rule, are far more common to the south of Tierra Del Fuego.
One day, when the ships were pretty close together, and well in through the ice, the sky cleared far too quickly to please Captain Mayne Brace. He knew at once that John Frost would have them in his clutches, if they did not soon beat a retreat.
So he signalled to his consort, and both vessels quickly had their heads turned to the north.
They might have found themselves clear in a few hours had it not suddenly come on to blow from the cold and icy south.
The ice began to pack.
Steam was got up with the greatest despatch, and nearly all sail taken in. Luckily there was no swell, else there would have been pressure enough to have thrown both vessels on their beam-ends on a floe.
The Sea Elephant was leading, and by-and-by the Walrus managed to creep right into her wake. This was an advantage for a time. A south wind, even with a clear sky, would naturally open the ice, but there was some demon current working underneath that they could not account for; and while they were still two miles from clear and open water, they found themselves rapidly becoming part and parcel of the pack.