“Look alive, men, with your poles,” cried the captain, “and shove with a will.”
The “Ay, ay, sir!” of the men was uttered with a heartiness that showed how powerfully this gleam of hope acted on their spirits; but a new damp was cast over them when, on gaining the open passage, they discovered that the bergs were not at rest, but were bearing down on the floe-ice with slow but awful momentum, and threatened to crush the ship between the two. Just then a low berg came driving up from the southward, dashing the spray over its sides, and with its fore-head ploughing up the smaller ice as if in scorn. A happy thought flashed across the captain’s mind. “Down the quarter boat,” he cried.
In an instant it struck the water, and four men were on the thwarts.
“Cast an ice-anchor on that berg.”
Peter Grim obeyed the order, and, with a swing that Hercules would have envied, planted it securely. In another moment the ship was following in the wake of this novel tug! It was a moment of great danger, for the bergs encroached on their narrow canal as they advanced, obliging them to brace the yards to clear the impending ice-walls, and they shaved the large berg so closely that the port-quarter boat would have been crushed if it had not been taken from the davits. Five minutes of such travelling brought them abreast of a grounded berg, to which they resolved to make fast; the order was given to cast off the rope; away went their white tug on his race to the far north, and the ship swung round in safety under the lee of the berg, where the crew acknowledged with gratitude their merciful deliverance from imminent danger.
Chapter Seven.
New characters introduced—An Old Game under Novel Circumstances—Remarkable Appearances in the Sky—O’Riley meets with a Mishap.
Dumps was a remarkably grave and sly character, and Poker was a wag—an incorrigible wag—in every sense of the term. Moreover, although they had an occasional fight, Dumps and Poker were excellent friends, and great favourites with the crew.