CHAPTER II.
THE ICE-BOUND SHIP.
Far down in the Antarctic Ocean a good ship was battling with heavy seas and a head wind.
For weeks the whaler Albatross had been trying to make headway against the vigorous norther which constantly headed them off.
But a few weeks more remained for them to get into northern seas before the winter would set in.
Captain Hardy had spent one winter among the ice and snow of the Antarctic and had no desire to spend another.
The ship was loaded down with whale oil, and pecuniarily the cruise bid fair to be a tremendous success.
But provisions were getting low, and to be nipped in the ice again meant a horrible fate, nothing short of starvation.
Realizing this, it was little wonder that Captain Hardy paced the deck of his ship anxiously and studied the northern sky.
“Well, Jack Wallis!” he cried, in his bluff way, “it still blows, and, by Neptune, it looks likely to keep on. We can’t make seaway in such a wind. What are we going to do?”
Jack Wallis, the mate, was a tall, handsome fellow, with resolute blue eyes and Saxon complexion.