“We must wait no longer here, lads,” said the captain who had just finished his observation. “If we do we shall be benighted, and may have to spend a long night without shelter.”
We hurried down the berg and directed our course towards the ship, but whether or not we should reach her appeared doubtful.
Chapter Seven.
It was evening when we got back to the encampment. On casting our eyes towards the ship, her appearance, as she lay overlapped with masses of ice on her beam ends, could not fail to produce a melancholy feeling.
“She’ll never float again!” exclaimed the captain with a sigh. “We must make the best of things, however, as they are.”
The men had progressed with the house. It was already habitable, though much more was to be done to enable us to bear the piercing cold of an arctic winter.
Next day was employed in getting everything out of the ship, which could be reached, likely to be useful, as she could no longer afford us a safe shelter. We began to cut away the bulwarks, the upper planks, and indeed all the wood we could get at, to serve for fuel as well as to strengthen the house. While thus employed, the fearful sounds from which we had for some time been free, again assailed our ears. There was a sudden movement of our floe, while all around us, and especially to the northward, we could see the ice heaving and tumbling, huge masses falling over, and floes rising one above another. Should our floe be subject to the same violent pressure, a slab might slide over it and sweep us to destruction. Even should some of the more active manage to climb to the top, our house and boats and stores must inevitably be lost, and those who might have escaped at first would, ere long, be frozen to death.
The hours we thus passed, not knowing at what moment the catastrophe might occur, were terrible in the extreme. To work was impossible. At length, however, the disturbance ceased. The intense cold quickly congealed the broken masses together, and we were able to turn in and sleep soundly.