"Put your pole down to him where he went in!" The men on the schooner shouted this to O'Shea.
"Put the rope round your waist!" This last was yelled by the skipper, perceiving that O'Shea himself was by no means safe.
A rope that had been thrown had a noose, through which O'Shea dashed his arms; then, seizing the pole, he struck the butt-end between the blocks of ice where Le Maître had fallen.
It seemed to Caius that the pole swayed in his hands, as if he were wrenching it from a hand that had gripped it strongly below; but it might have been only the grinding of the ice.
O'Shea thrust the pole with sudden vehemence further down, as if in a frantic effort to bring it better within reach of Le Maître if he were there; or, as Caius thought, it might have been that, feeling where the man was, he stunned him with the blow.
Standing in a boat that was tipping and grinding among the ice, O'Shea appeared to be exercising marvellous force and dexterity in thus using the pole at all.
The wind was now propelling the schooner forward, and her pressure on the ice ceased. O'Shea threw off the noose of the rope wildly, and looked to the men on the vessel, as if quite uncertain what to do next.
It was a difficult matter for anyone to decide. To leave him there was manifestly impossible; but if the schooner again veered round, the jamming of the ice over the head of La Maître would again occur. The men on the schooner, not under good discipline, were all shouting and talking.
"He's dead by now, wherever he is." The skipper made this quiet parenthesis either to himself or to Caius. Then he shouted aloud: "Work your boat through to us!"
O'Shea began poling vigorously. The ice was again floating loosely, and it was but the work of a few minutes to push his heavy boat into the open water that was in the wake of the schooner. There was a pause, like a pause in a funeral service, when O'Shea, standing ankle-deep in the water which his boat held, and the men huddled together upon the schooner's deck, turned to look at all the places in which it seemed possible that the body of Le Maître might again be seen. They looked and looked until they were tired with looking. The body had, no doubt, floated up under some cake of ice, and from thence would speedily sink to a bier of sand at the bottom of the bay.