“Bravo! my lads,” said the captain, cheerily. “Over the side with you then, and help with the ice-saws.”
Those great ice-saws were about twenty feet long, and had four cross handles at the top, so that when let down, on the perpendicular, against the piece, four men standing above could work one saw. Frank and his two friends, with Mr Lewis, the mate, took charge of a saw, and the work went on cheerily. The men sang as they laboured, and there was as much laughing and joking as if they had been husbandmen working together in the harvest-field, instead of men working for their dear lives. By eight o’clock the harbour was complete.
By eight o’clock the ice had almost closed upon them.
And now to get the ship into this portus salutis. There was so little time; other giant bergs were close aboard of them, rising and falling on the swelling waves with a noise that was simply appalling. The captain had to give his orders through the speaking-trumpet, and even then his voice was often drowned by the grinding, shrieking din of the heaving floes. But at last they have worked her in, and now for a time at least she is safe, for she rises and falls with the ice; and, though hemmed in on all sides, has nothing to fear.
The Grampus was “beset;” and from that very hour began one of the dreariest seasons of imprisonment that ever a beleaguered ship’s crew experienced. They were far away from aid of any kind that they knew of, the ice was terribly heavy, and, worse than all, the summer season was far advanced, and already the sun dipped very close to the northern horizon at midnight.
The storm abated; in twelve hours the ice had ceased to rise and fall, and a silence, deep as death, reigned once more over the frozen sea.
“We must do the best we can,” said brave Captain Anderson, “to amuse ourselves and each other. God only knows when we may get clear, but we can trust in Him who rules the sea as well as the dry land.”
“Amen!” said Chisholm, in a quiet and earnest voice.
“We’ll make off skins now for a week or two,” said the captain; “that will help to pass the time.”