“The channel is getting narrower,� he heard the captain say. “I never saw the growlers so thick up here at this time of the year before.�
“Better put about, sir, if we don’t want to get nipped,� advised the mate.
“I guess that’s good advice,� muttered Carson, “but I hate to turn our nose south again. ’Bout ship!� he bawled.
“’Bout ship!� roared the mate. “Lively, boys, be smart! Leggo all tackles! Hard a-lee on your wheel! Smartly, now.�
The schooner’s sails shivered and flapped as she came up into the wind. The crew hauled on ropes and halyards. Then the smart little schooner paid off handsomely and filled away on another tack.
It was none too soon. Ahead of them, drawn together by the ocean currents, two great bergs crashed together with the force of titanic steam hammers.
“If we’d been caught there, we’d have been smashed like an egg-shell,� observed Terror Carson, to his mate, without any particular emotion now that the danger was over.
CHAPTER XIV: TERROR CARSON’S NERVE.
Bang! Crash!
Raynor was almost thrown out of his bunk by a terrific concussion.