"There's an open lead between them and the floe-ice," exclaimed Bolton
in a hopeful tone of voice, seizing an ice-pole and leaping on the
gunwale.
"Look alive, men, with your poles," cried the captain, "and shove with a
will!"
The "Ay, ay, sir," of the men was uttered with a heartiness that showed
how powerfully this gleam of hope acted on their spirits; but a new damp
was cast over them when, on gaining the open passage, they discovered
that the bergs were not at rest, but were bearing down on the floe-ice
with slow but awful momentum, and threatening to crush the ship between
the two. Just then a low berg came driving up from the southward,
dashing the spray over its sides, and with its forehead ploughing up
the smaller ice as if in scorn. A happy thought flashed across the
captain's mind.
"Down the quarter boat," he cried.
In an instant it struck the water, and four men were on the thwarts.
"Cast an ice-anchor on that berg."
Peter Grim obeyed the order, and, with a swing that Hercules would have
envied, planted it securely. In another moment the ship was following in
the wake of this novel tug! It was a moment of great danger, for the
bergs encroached on their narrow canal as they advanced, obliging them
to brace the yards to clear the impending ice-walls, and they shaved the
large berg so closely that the port quarter-boat would have been crushed
if it had not been taken from the davits.
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