It required more than two hours for the whale-boat of Roswell to cross the bay, and reach the margin of that vast field of ice, which was prevented from drifting into the open space only by encountering the stable rocks of the first of the group. Every eye was now turned in quest of an opening, by means of which it might be possible to get further to the eastward. One, at length, was discovered, and into it Gardiner dashed, ordering his boat's crew to stretch themselves out at their oars, though every man with him thought they were plunging into possible destruction. On the boat went, however, now sheering to starboard, now to port, to avoid projecting spurs of ice, until she had ploughed her way through a fearfully narrow, and a deviating passage, that sometimes barely permitted them to go through, until a spot was reached where the two fields which formed this strait actually came in close crushing contact with each other. Roswell took a look before and behind him, saw that his boat was safe owing to the formation of the two outlines of the respective fields, when he sprang upon the ice itself, bidding the boat-steerer to wait for him. A shout broke out of the lips of the young captain the instant he was erect on the ice. There lay the schooner, the Martha's Vineyard craft, within half a mile of him, in plain sight, and in as plain jeopardy. She was jammed, with every prospect, as Roswell thought, of being crushed, ere she could get free from the danger.
Chapter XVI.
"A sculler's notch in the stern he made,
An oar he shaped of the bottle blade;
Then sprung to his seat with a lightsome leap
And launched afar on the calm, blue deep."The Culprit Fay.
Roswell was hardly on the ice before a sound of a most portentous sort reached his ear. He knew at once that the field had been rent in twain by outward pressure, and that some new change was to occur that might release or might destroy the schooner. He was on the point of springing forward in order to join Daggett, when a call from the boat arrested his steps.
"These here fields are coming together, Captain Gar'ner, and our boat will soon be crushed unless we get it out of the water."
Sure enough, a single glance behind him sufficed to assure the young master of the truth of this statement. The field he was on was slowly swinging, bringing its western margin in closer contact with the eastern edge of the floe that lay within it. The movement could be seen merely by the closing of the channel through which the boat had come, and by the cracking and crushing of the ice on the edges of the two fields. So tremendous was the pressure, however, that cakes as large as a small house were broken off, and forced upward on the surface of the field, or ground into small fragments, as it might be under the vice of a power hitherto unknown to the spectators. Slow as was the movement of the floe, it was too fast to allow of delay; and, finding a suitable place, the boat was hauled up, and put in security on the floe that lay nearest the schooner.
"This may give us a long drag to get back into the water, Stimson, and a night out of our bunks," said Roswell, looking about him, as soon as the task was achieved.
"I do not know that, sir," was the answer. "It seems to me that the floe has parted alongside of them rocks, and if-so-be that should turn out to be the case, the whull on us, schooner, boat, and all hands, may drift into the bay; for that there is a current setting from this quarter up towards our island, I'm sartain of, by the feel of my oar, as we come along."
"It may be so--the currents run all manner of ways, and field-ice may pass the shoals, though a berg never can. I do not remember, nevertheless, to have ever seen even a floe within the group--nothing beyond large cakes that have got adrift by some means or other."
"I have, sir, though only once. A few days a'ter we got in, when I was ship-keeper, and all hands was down under the rocks of the north eend, a field come in at the northern entrance of the bay, and went out at the southern. It might have been a league athwart it, and it drifted, as a body might say, as if it had some one aboard to give it the right sheer. Touch it did at the south cape, but just winding as handy as a craft could have done it, in a good tide's way, out to sea it went ag'in, bound to the south pole for-ti-'now."