'Oh, if you please, Master Godfrey, I think I'd sooner stop with the crew!' faltered Nancy.
'Very well,' said Godfrey calmly; 'if I leave my bones in the Arctic Circle, go home in the Victory and take the news to my countrymen in England.'
'Oh, Master Godfrey, do come back!' screamed Nancy, for the ice was really swaying; 'it won't be only your bones, it will be all of you if it breaks.'
'I can't hear you,' said Godfrey, with his back to her; 'you and the crew are miles away, I'm beyond where the foot of anything ever trod except Polar bears. Why, what's that?' and he doubled up his hand and looked through it for a telescope.
'It's the tub they used to use for the pig-wash,' exclaimed Nancy; 'it's frozen into the ice. Oh, Master Godfrey, do come back!'
'Some other discoverer has been here before me,' said Godfrey gravely, without noticing her. 'I see the hulk of a vessel locked in the ice, and unless I am mistaken she flies English colours. I must board her and see whether——'
A shriek from Nancy and a dreadful rumbling crack cut short his speech, and the next moment Godfrey knew what was meant by ice not bearing. The smooth surface gave way under him, the cold water was round his feet, and in an instant he would have been underneath it altogether but for the tub, to which he clung with all his might. There was a dreadful moment while Nancy screamed at the top of her voice and Godfrey's knees and feet battered the tub in the cold black water, then with the triumphant exclamation, 'I've boarded her,' he tumbled over into it.
Luckily the tub, though old, was fairly water-tight, and bobbed up and down with Godfrey inside it in the big hole which he had made, and though a wide space of cracked ice and dark water lay between him and the shore, he seemed to be safe for the present. As for Nancy, she did the wisest thing she could and rushed down the lane calling for help. She did not have to run far. Almost directly she heard steps on the frosty road, quickened at the sound of her screams, and a gentleman came round the bend of the lane, sending his voice before him as he shouted: 'What's the matter?'
His own eyes told him quicker than Nancy's breathless explanation.
'All right,' he exclaimed, 'he's safe while he keeps still. Don't cry, little woman, and I'll tow him ashore.'