"Tom," said the skipper to the first hand, "catch!"
He leaped.
"Skipper," said Tom Watt, in the uttermost confusion, an instant later, "glad t' see you! Come in! You isn't a minute too early."
In this way, proceeding with admirable self-possession, the souls aboard the Fish Killer jumped from the frying-pan. Whether or not it was into the fire was not for a moment in doubt. When the schooner had once fairly reached the sea, which immediately happened, she sank. They saw her waver, slowly settle, disappear; when her topmast went tottering under water the end had come.
Whatever may be said of a frying-pan, nobody can accuse the crew of the Fish Killer of having come within reach of a fire. Aboard the berg it was cold—awfully cold. Icebergs carry an atmosphere of that sort even into the Gulf Stream; they radiate cold so effectively that the captains of steamers take warning and evade them. It was cold—very, very cold. There was nothing to temper the numbing bitterness of the situation. And what the night might bring could only be surmised.
Though they were born to lives of hardship and peril, though they had long been used to the chances of the sea, not one of the castaways had ever before fallen into a predicament so barren of hope. Flung on an iceberg, adrift on the wild North Atlantic, derelict where no ships passed, at the mercy of the capricious winds, without food or fire: there seemed to be no possibility of escape. But for a time they did not despair; and, moreover, for a time each felt it a high duty to make light of the situation, to joke of cold-storage and polar bears, that the spirits of the others might be encouraged. As dusk approached, however, the ghastly humour failed. Ruin, agony, grief, imminent death; in the moody silence, they dwelt, rather, upon these things.
It was not yet dark when a faint shock, a hardly perceptible shiver, a crash from aloft, a subsiding rumble, apprised the castaways of a portentous change of condition.
"What's that, now?" growled the cook.
It was a cruelly anxious moment. Only the event itself would determine whether or not the berg was to turn turtle. They waited.