At the same time a loud, crashing, grinding noise was heard, sufficient to strike terror into the stoutest hearts. But it must be remembered that we were all so busily engaged in flying here and there in the performance of our duty, that we had no time for fear. This is a great secret to enable men to go through dangers unappalled. Had we been compelled to stand inactive, our feelings might have been very different.
The ship wore slowly round; but still she seemed approaching the threatening mass. She plunged more violently than before amid the raging sea, and in another moment I felt certain we must be among the upheaving masses. Just then her head seemed to turn from them; but a sea struck her on the quarter and came rolling on board; a tremendous blow was felt forward, another followed. Cries arose from some of the men that all was lost, and I expected to find the ship instantly dashed to pieces.
Our good captain rushed on deck. He cast one glance aloft, and another at the ice. “She’s clear, my lads,” he shouted. The ship came round, and in another instant we were on the eastern or lee side of the floe, and gliding smoothly on in calm water through a broad passage, leading amid the main body of the polar ice.
Chapter Twenty Four.
Our ship made good progress, considering the impediments in her way, towards the fishing grounds in the north, to which she was bound. Sometimes we had a clear sea; at other times we were sailing among patches of ice and icebergs, or through lanes penetrating into packs of many miles in extent, and from which it seemed impossible we should ever again be extricated. Our captain, or one of his mates, was always at this time in the crow’s-nest, directing the course of the ship amid the dangers which surrounded her.
I shall not soon forget the first day of May, which I spent in the icy sea. It was as unlike May-day at home as any day could well be as far as the temperature went, though we were sailing through a sea tolerably free from ice.
“All play to-day and no work, my boy, for we are going to have a visit from a king and queen,” said an old whaler, David McGee by name, as he gave me a slap on the shoulder which would have warmed up my blood not a little, if anything could in that biting weather.
“He must be King Frost, then,” I answered, laughing; “for we have plenty of his subjects around us already.”