But by midnight it was seen that the mate’s advice had been good. Without warning on the barometer, a furious storm swept down on the anchored schooner. She began to drag. Two more anchors were let go and she held securely. But now another peril appeared.
Huge fields of drift ice and growlers, driven from the north by the storm, drove down on the Polly Ann. The ice crunched against her sides like rasping teeth. It seemed as if the forces of nature had combined to destroy her.
The stout timbers of her hull cracked ominously under the terrific pressure. There was no sleep on board. All hands were on deck. Terror Carson, more perturbed than Raynor had ever seen him, strode the deck as if distracted.
The schooner was the apple of his eye. But now it appeared that she was doomed, and through his fault.
There was nothing to be done. A sickly gray dawn showed the schooner surrounded by ice for miles. Almost as far as the eye could reach, in fact.
“We’ll never get out of here alive,� declared the sailors.
“Nothing but bad luck has followed us on this trip,� was another remark heard among them.
All that day the Polly Ann held together. Terror Carson grew more confident.
“The old hooker will weather it yet,� he declared. But the mate shook his head.
“She’ll leave her bones here,� he said.