All this had been done in ten minutes! Then it was that the vast superiority of nature over the resources of man made itself apparent. The people of the two vessels stood aghast with this sad picture of their own insignificance before their eyes. The crew of the wreck, it is true, had escaped without difficulty; the movement having been as slow and steady as it was irresistible. But there they were, in the clothes they had on, with all their effects buried under piles of ice that were already thirty or forty feet in height.
"She looks as if she was built there, Gar'ner!" Daggett coolly observed, as he stood regarding the scene with eyes as intently riveted on the wreck as human organs were ever fixed on any object. "Had a man told me this could happen, I would not have believed him!"
"Had she been a three-decker, this ice would have treated her in the same way. There is a force in such a field that walls of stone could not withstand."
"Captain Gar'ner--Captain Gar'ner," called out Stimson, hastily; "we'd better go back, sir; our own craft is in danger. She is drifting fast in towards the cape, and may reach it afore we can get to her!"
Sure enough, it was so. In one of the changes that are so unaccountable among the ice, the floe had taken a sudden and powerful direction towards the entrance of the Great Bay. It was probably owing to the circumstance that the inner field had forced its way past the cape, and made room for its neighbour to follow. A few of Daggett's people, with Daggett himself, remained to see what might yet be saved from the wreck; but all the rest of the men started for the cape, towards which the Oyster Pond craft was now directly setting. The distance was less than a league; and, as yet, there was not much show on the rocks. By taking an upper shelf, it was possible to make pretty good progress; and such was the manner of Roswell's present march.
It was an extraordinary sight to see the coast along which our party was hastening, just at that moment. As the cakes of ice were broken from the field, they were driven upward by the vast pressure from without, and the whole line of the shore seemed as if alive with creatures that were issuing from the ocean to clamber on the rocks. Roswell had often seen that very coast peopled with seals, as it now appeared to be in activity with fragments of ice, that were writhing, and turning, and rising, one upon another, as if possessed of the vital principle.
In half an hour Roswell and his party reached the house. The schooner was then less than half a mile from the spot, still setting in, along with the outer field, but not nipped. So far from being in danger of such a calamity, the little basin in which she lay had expanded, instead of closing; and it would have been possible to handle a quick-working craft in it, under her canvass. An exit, however, was quite out of the question; there being no sign of any passage to or from that icy dock. There the craft still lay, anchored to the weather-floe, while the portion of her crew which remained on board was as anxiously watching the coast as those who were on the coast watched her. At first, Roswell gave his schooner up; but on closer examination found reason to hope that she might pass the rocks, and enter the inner, rather than the Great, Bay.
Chapter XXIII.
"To prayer;--for the glorious sun is gone,
And the gathering darkness of night comes on;
Like a curtain from God's kind hand it flows,
To shade the couch where his children repose.
Then kneel, while the watching stars are bright,
And give your last thoughts to the guardian of night."Ware.
Desolate, indeed, and nearly devoid of hope, had the situation of our sealers now become. It was mid-day, and it was freezing everywhere in the shade. A bright genial sun was shedding its glorious rays on the icy panorama; but it was so obliquely as to be of hardly any use in dispelling the frosts. Far as the eye could see, even from the elevation of the cape, there was nothing but ice, with the exception of that part of the Great Bay into which the floe had not yet penetrated. To the southward, there stood clustering around the passage a line of gigantic bergs, placed like sentinels, as if purposely to stop all egress in that direction. The water had lost its motion in the shift of wind, and new ice had formed over the whole bay, as was evident by a white sparkling line that preceded the irresistible march of the floe.