Chapter 16

"A sculler's notch in the stern he made,
An oar he shaped of the bottle blade;
Then sprung to his seat with a lightsome leap
And launched afar on the calm, blue deep."

_The Culprit Fay._

Roswell was hardly on the ice before a sound of a most portentous sort
reached his ear. He knew at once that the field had been rent in twain by
outward pressure, and that some new change was to occur that might release
or might destroy the schooner. He was on the point of springing forward in
order to join Daggett, when a call from the boat arrested his steps.

"These here fields are coming together, Captain Gar'ner, and our boat will
soon be crushed unless we get it out of the water."

Sure enough, a single glance behind him sufficed to assure the young
master of the truth of this statement. The field he was on was slowly
swinging, bringing its western margin in closer contact with the eastern
edge of the floe that lay within it. The movement could be seen merely by
the closing of the channel through which the boat had come, and by the
cracking and crushing of the ice on the edges of the two fields. So
tremendous was the pressure, however, that cakes as large as a small house
were broken off, and forced upward on the surface of the field, or ground
into small fragments, as it might be under the vice of a power hitherto
unknown to the spectators. Slow as was the movement of the floe, it was
too fast to allow of delay; and, finding a suitable place, the boat was
hauled up, and put in security on the floe that lay nearest the schooner.

"This may give us a long drag to get back into the water, Stimson, and a
night out of our bunks," said Roswell, looking about him, as soon as the
task was achieved.

"I do not know that, sir," was the answer. "It seems to me that the floe
has parted alongside of them rocks, and if-so-be that should turn out to
be the case, the whull on us, schooner, boat, and all hands, may drift
into the bay; for that there is a current setting from this quarter up
towards our island, I'm sartain of, by the feel of my oar, as we come
along."

"It may be so--the currents run all manner of ways, and field-ice may pass
the shoals, though a berg never can. I do not remember, nevertheless, to
have ever seen even a floe within the group--nothing beyond large cakes
that have got adrift by some means or other."

"I have, sir, though only once. A few days a'ter we got in, when I was
ship-keeper, and all hands was down under the rocks of the north eend, a
field come in at the northern entrance of the bay, and went out at the
southern. It might have been a league athwart it, and it drifted, as a
body might say, as if