CHAPTER VI.
THE LAST WHITE MAN.
As this was to be our last tie-up in Melville Bay, and as every body was well satisfied that Melville Bay had been thoroughly “done,” there was now some impatience to hear the order given to “cast off.”
But the order did not come even with the close of the day, and there we were clearly to remain until the morrow. Meanwhile a light wind set in from the south-east, and, coming directly from the Greenland glaciers, it brought the temperature down below the freezing-point; and when at length “seven bells” aroused the ship’s company from their slumbers, the Panther was a prisoner. In every direction, as far as the eye could reach, the sea, where it had been open the evening before, was now covered with ice. In many places this young ice would bear a man’s weight. It was a very needless predicament to have been placed in, but these Newfoundland sailors must not for the world be robbed of their night’s rest.
Luckily the Panther was strong, or we should have lain there beside the ruined castle all winter. It was at least a quarter of an hour after we had actually at length cast off from the floe before we budged an inch, and then it was a long while before we made much headway. By-and-by, however, we went ahead at the rate of one knot an hour, and then, after that, crunched through the transparent film that was on the sea. The crystals flew to left and right; and when the sun came out, shining upon the flying fragments, it seemed as if we were cutting through a waste of jewelry. A few hours of this sort of running brought us into the clear water of an opening lead, and thence our flight from Melville Bay was made much after the same fashion as that of our going in—the same cutting through and breaking down of floes, and the same wild excitement as before.
WE STEAM AWAY FROM THE MIDNIGHT SUN.
Our good ship seemed to have a realizing sense of her situation, and to enjoy as much as we the prospect which had so suddenly overtaken us together of wintering in the dreaded “pack.” Welch, the fireman, declared that the Panther was a ship “as knowed a thing or two.”
When the day closed we had Wilcox Point and the Devil’s Thumb abeam. The great ice-fields which on our way north had so much embarrassed us on entering Melville Bay had by this time either drifted or melted away; and now through an unobstructed sea we held our course for the Duck Islands, and steamed away from the midnight sun.
From the Duck Islands we groped our way down the coast through one of those provoking fogs which so often come to pester the life of the Arctic voyager, and which set upon us early in the night.