After remaining a few days at Refuge Harbor, a desperate push was made to get the vessel farther north and east. For twelve days they manfully battled with the ice, and made forty miles. This brought them to the bottom of a broad shallow bay, which they named Force Bay. Here they fastened the brig to a shelving, rocky ledge near the shore.
CHAPTER II.
ANCHORED AT LAST.
ON Wednesday, August seventeenth, the heralds of a storm from the South reached the brig. They made their announcement by hurling against her sides some heavy floe-pieces. Understanding this hint of what was coming, the explorers clung to their rocky breakwater by three heavy hawsers. Louder and louder roared the blast, and more fiercely crashed the ice which it hurled against the ledge. At midnight one of the cables, the smaller of the three, parted, and the storm seemed to shout its triumph at this success as it assailed the writhing vessel more vigorously. But the ledge broke the power in a measure of the wind and ice, and was, indeed, a godsend to the imperiled men, so they put it down on their chart as Godsend Ledge.
The next day the huge, human-faced walrus came quite near the brig in great numbers, shaking their grim, dripping fronts. The dovekies, more cheerful visitors, scud past toward the land. Both walrus and fowls proclaimed in their way the terribleness of the increasing tempest. The place of the broken hawser had been supplied, and the worried craft strained away at three strong lines which held on bravely. Everything on board was stowed away, or lashed securely, which could invite an assault by the wind.
Saturday, late in the afternoon, Dr. Kane, wet, and weary with watching, went below and threw himself for rest and warmth into his berth. Scarcely had he done this before a sharp, loud twang brought him to his feet. One of the six-inch hawsers had parted; its sound had scarcely been lost in the uproar before a sharp and shrill "twang! twang!" announced the snapping of the whale line. The brig now clung to the ledge by a single cable—a new ten-inch manilla line, which held on grandly. The mate came waddling down into the cabin as the doctor was drawing on his last article of clothing to go on deck. "Captain Kane," he exclaimed, "she wont hold much longer; it's blowing the devil himself."
All hands now gathered about the brave manilla line on which their fate seemed to depend. Its deep Eolian chant mingled solemnly with the rattle of the rigging and the moaning of the shrouds, and died away in the tumult of the conflicting wind and sea. The sailors were loud in its praises as they watched it with bated breath. It was singing its death song, for, with the noise of a shotted gun, and a wreath of smoke, it gave way, and out plunged the brig into the rushing current of the tempest-tossed ice.
Two hours of hard and skillful labor were bestowed on the vessel to get her back to the ledge; first by beating, or trying to do so, up into the wind; and then by warping along the edge of the solid floe, but all in vain. A light sail was then set, that they might keep command of the helm, and away they scud through a tortuous lead filled with heavy, broken ice.
At seven o'clock on Sunday morning the vessel was heading, under full way, upon huge masses of ice. The heaviest anchor was thrown out to stay her speed. But the ice-torrent so crowded upon the poor craft that a buoy was hastily fastened to the chain, and it was slipped, and away went "the best bower," the sailor's trusted friend in such dangers.