A mile ahead another grand sight presented itself. The northern and larger of the two floes, acted strongly upon by the gale, and opposed by the smaller floe, was slowly but irresistibly swinging round, and in its sweep it had come into contact with a very large berg, which, influenced apparently by some undercurrent, was with equally irresistible force actually making its way to windward in the teeth of the gale. The result was a scene of wild chaos and confusion and destruction compared with which that upon which they had just looked was as nothing. The berg simply tore its way through the floe as a plough does through a furrow, splitting up the thick ice before it, and tossing the huge fragments hither and thither until its path through the field was marked by a black band of open water churned into fleecy froth by the breath of the tempest, and bordered on either side by an immense wall of ice-blocks, each of which constituted a small berg in itself.
The cold had by this time so increased in intensity that the colonel and the baronet were only too glad to abandon their posts, now that there was no further necessity for maintaining them, and retreat to the friendly shelter of the pilot-house, where they lost no time in closing themselves in.
Chapter Nine.
An Exciting Adventure and a Rescue.
It was at this moment that Mildmay caught a momentary glimpse of an object far away on the northern horizon, which his practised eye at once told him was a sail of some sort. He instantly seized one of the telescopes suspended in the pilot-house, and brought the instrument to bear in her direction. For nearly a minute he was unsuccessful in his endeavour to find her; but at length she reappeared from behind an intervening berg; and it appeared to him that she was in a situation of considerable peril. She was a barque, under close-reefed topsails, reefed courses, fore topmast staysail, and mizzen; and she appeared to be embayed in the bight of a huge floe, with a whole fleet of bergs in dangerous proximity and apparently bearing down upon her. Perhaps the strangest peculiarity about her was that, notwithstanding her perilous position, she was dressed with flags, from her mast-heads downward, as though it were a gala day on board.
Mildmay’s anxious attitude and expression of face, together with his earnest devotion to his telescope, soon attracted the notice of the rest of the party; and the baronet asked him what object it was that so riveted his attention.
He withdrew his eyes for a moment from the instrument, and, pointing out the small and scarcely distinguishable dark spot on the horizon, said:
“Do you see that object, gentlemen? Well, that is a barque embayed in the ice, and evidently making a supreme effort to free herself—an effort which to me, and at this distance, appears quite hopeless. It is my opinion that, unless the wind changes, or something equally unforeseen occurs, she will within the next half hour be smashed into matchwood—unless, indeed, we can help her.”