The blow had been launched! A moment later, the Dictator was ploughing forward, charging the pan, which she must strike like a battering ram, and shiver to pieces. She was of solid oak, this good ship, and builded for such attacks; steel plates would buckle and spring under such shocks as she had many times triumphantly sustained. The men were silent while they awaited the event. There was not a sound save the hiss of the water at the ship's prows, and the chug-chug of the engines.
Archie caught his breath. His eyes were fixed on the fast vanishing space of water. The thrill of the adventure was manifest in Billy Topsail's sharp, quick breathing, and in his blue eyes, which were as though about to pop out of their sockets.
"Stop!"
The engines abruptly ceased their labour. Only a fathom or two of water lay ahead. The ship was about to strike. There was a long drawn instant of suspense. Then came the blow!
It was a fearful shock. The vessel quivered, crushed her way on for a space, and stopped dead, quivering still. A groan ran over her, from stem to stern, as though she had been racked in every part. The main topmast snapped and fell forward on the rigging with a crash.
A volley of cracks sounded from the ice, like the discharge of a thousand rifles, slowly subsiding. Dead silence fell and continued for a moment. Then the screw churned the water, and the ship backed off, sound, but beaten; for the pan of ice lay, unbroken and unchanged, in its place, with but a jagged bruise, where the blow had been struck.
"Aloft, there, some o' you, an' cut away that spar!" the captain shouted. "Bill, get below, an' see if she's tight. Here, you, Dickson, call the watch t' make sail. Mr. Girth," to the second mate, "take a crew t' the ice. Blast that pan in three places. Lively, now, every man o' you!"
Roaring subordinates, answering "Ay, ay, sirs!" rattling blocks and chains, the fall of hurried feet, cries of warning and encouragement, the engine's gasps: these sounds confounded the confusion, and continued it, while the ship, snorting like a frightened horse, was backed to her first position.
"He'll try it again," Archie gleefully observed to Billy.
The captain was pacing the bridge. Try it again? He was in a fever of impatience to be at it! It was as though the pan of ice were a foe needing only another and a heavier blow to be beaten down.