They obeyed orders cheerfully, though they knew it meant a thrash to windward along the perilous edge of the ice. Soon the windlass was caked with glistening ice, and long spikes of it hung from her rail, while the slippery crystals gathered thick on deck. Lumps and floes of ice detached themselves from the parent mass, and sailed out to meet the vessel, crashing on one another, while it seemed to the men who watched him that Wyllard tried how closely he could shave them before he ran the Selache off with a vicious drag at the wheel. None of them, however, cared to utter a remonstrance.
They brought the schooner around when she had stretched out on the one tack a couple of miles, and, standing in again close-hauled, found the ice thicker than ever. Then she came around once more, and, until the early dusk fell, Wyllard stood at the jarring helm or high up in the forward shrouds.
“We can’t work along the edge in the dark,” he said to Dampier.
“Well,” answered the skipper dryly, “it wouldn’t be wise. We could stand on as she’s lying until half through the night, and then come round and pick up the ice again a little before sun-up.”
Wyllard made a sign of acquiescence. “Then,” he said, “don’t call me until you’re in sight of it. A day of this kind takes it out of one.”
He moved aft heavily toward the deck-house, and Dampier watched him with a smile of comprehension, for he was a man who had in his time made many fruitless efforts, and bravely faced defeat. After all, it is possible that when the final reckoning comes some failures will count.
For several hours the Selache stretched out close-hauled into what they supposed to be open water, and they certainly saw no ice. They hove her to, and when the wind fell light brought her round and crept back slowly upon the opposite tack. Wyllard had gone to sleep after his day of anxious work, and daylight was just breaking when he next went out on deck. There was scarcely a breath of wind and the heavy calm seemed portentous and unnatural. The schooner lay lurching on a sluggish swell, with the frost-wool thick on her rigging, and a belt of haze ahead of her. The ice glimmered in the growing light, but in one or two places stretches of blue-gray water seemed to penetrate it, and Dampier, who strode aft when he saw Wyllard, said he believed that there must be an opening somewhere.
“By the thickness of it, that ice has formed some time, and as we’ve seen nothing but a skin it must have come from further north,” he added. “It gathered up under a point or in a bay most likely, until a shift of wind broke it out, and the stream or breeze sent it down this way. That seems to indicate that there can’t be a great deal of it, but a few days’ calm and frost would freeze it solid.”
“Well?” Wyllard returned impatiently.
“It lies between us and the inlet, and it’s quite clear that we can’t stay where we are. Once we got nipped, there’d probably be an end of her. We must get into that inlet at once or make for the other further south.”