Fear began to assail her. Her forehead grew cold. Her hands trembled. Was it, after all, a false hope?
She had but a moment to wait. Then she knew. The fog had lifted slightly. She could see farther, could tell what was closing down upon them.
The shock was too much for her. She sank limply to the deck. It was as if she had been wandering in a fog on a rocky hillside searching for sheep, had thought she saw them coming out of the fog, only to discover that the creatures she saw were prowling wolves. The white bulks on the surface of the water were not boats searching for them but cakes of ice. And these, there could be no doubt about it, were fast closing in upon the O Moo. With the water still heaving, this meant danger—might indeed mean the destruction of their craft.
“I ought,” she struggled to her feet, “I ought to tell the girls.”
Yet she did not tell them. What was the use? she reasoned. There was nothing to do but wait, and that she could do very well alone.
There is something awe-inspiring about the gathering of great bodies of ice which have been scattered by a storm. They come together as if each had a motor, an engineer and a pilot on board. And yet their coming is in absolute silence. If one cake chances to touch another, the contact is so slight that there is no sound.
And so they assemble. Coming from all points of the compass, they reunite as a great fleet might after a mighty and victorious battle.
The O Moo chanced to be in the very midst of this particular gathering. As Florence watched she was thrilled and fascinated. Now the surface was a field of blue cloth with a white patch here and there. Now the white covered half, now two-thirds, now three-fourths of the field. And now a cake brushed the hull of the yacht ever so gently.
Suddenly she realized that a strange thing had happened. The water which had been rolling had ceased to roll.
“The ice did that,” she whispered. “Perhaps it’s not dangerous after all.”