The strain was even harder to bear than the cold and hunger. Great chunks of ice came sailing down on them continually, and the boys wondered each time if the “Gazelle” would be able to stand another such hard knock.
The bar beyond caught the majority of the larger chunks, and soon an ice gorge was formed that hourly grew bigger until the “Gazelle’s” stern was not twenty yards from it. Each new cake added to the heap, and formed new teeth, which were ever moving in the rushing current—teeth which would grind up any living thing in a very few moments.
The second night after the “Gazelle” got afloat the boys were in the cabin, and all but Kenneth had fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion—the recurring bumps of drifting cakes of ice not disturbing them in the least. But Ransom could not sleep. He could not forget the horrible danger which they were in, nor could he shut his ears to the sound of crunching ice just behind the yacht.
Of a sudden there came a jar with a new quality in it. Ransom rushed up the companionway, grabbing his woollen cap as he ran, then forward over the icy deck. He found the ragged, frayed end of the anchor cable hanging overboard. The constant rubbing of the ice had weakened it, and the extra heavy floe had completely sundered it. There was but one anchor now to depend on; if that should fail them, it would mean instant destruction to the yacht and certain death for her crew.
It was too great a risk to run—that other anchor must be found somehow, and its holding power made good again.
Realizing that his companions would try to deter him from the desperate undertaking which he had in mind, Ransom did not call his friends, but quietly launched “His Nibs” from the stern, in spite of the current and the remorseless ice, and drawing her forward by the painter he got in at the bow and prepared to feel for the parted anchor cable with a boat hook. He pulled hand over hand on the cable of the other anchor, and finally gained a point where he thought he might begin to reach for the sunken line. It was well past midnight, and so dark that everything had to be done by sense of touch only. Intensely cold, the oars, the line he was holding, and the boat hook—everything, in fact, was coated with a slippery skin of ice.
Holding on by one hand to the anchor cable and the boat hook with the other, Kenneth began to grope for the other line. His right arm ached with the exertion of feeling on the bottom with a heavy boat hook, while his left wrist seemed about to break with the strain put upon it; the cold nipped at his exposed face and wet, mittened hands. But still he persevered. At last he felt the touch of the line at the end of his pole; he began to haul in slowly—holding with his elbow the pole as he took a fresh hold further up. Suddenly a huge floe struck the little boat, dragging the anchor line out of his grasp, and pulled him backwards into the bottom of the boat. The current swept him back past the “Gazelle” and on toward the gnashing teeth of the gorge.
CHAPTER VI
AN ARCTIC ADVENTURE
“Arthur—Clyde—Frank! O-o-o-oh boys!”