"Turned turtle, ain't she?" remarked the skipper, calmly.
"The pack might have carried us near it!"
"Oh," said the captain, lightly, "but it didn't. She's a good ship, the Dictator. What's more," he added, "she's makin' her way right through the pack."
Another berg had taken form over the port quarter. The captain shaped a course for it, eyeing it carefully as he drew near. It was low—not higher than the ship's spars—and broad, with the impression of stability strong upon it.
"See that berg, b'y?" said the captain. "Well," decisively, "we'll lie in the lee o' that in half an hour. You see, b'y," he went on, "the wind makes small bother for a solid berg. It whips the pan ice along, easy enough, but the bergs float their own way, quiet as you please. In the lee of every big fellow like that, there's open water. We'll lie there, tied up, till mornin'."
In half an hour, the ship broke from the ice into the lee of the berg. The floe raced past under the force of the gale, which left the lee air and water untouched by its violence. Skillful seamanship brought the vessel broadside to the ice. A wild commotion ensued: orders roared from the bridge, signal bells, the shouts of the line men, the hiss of steam, and the churning of the screw. Archie saw young Billy Topsail scramble to the ice like a cat, with the first line in his hand: then Bill o' Burnt Bay and half a dozen others, with axes and hooks.
In twenty minutes the engines were at rest, the ship was lying like a log in a mill pond, the watch paced the deck in solitude, and Archibald Armstrong was asleep in his berth in the captain's cabin—dreaming that the mate was wrong and the captain right: that the gale had abated in the night, and the morning had broken sunny.