cry of alarm which was more a yell than anything else, the
men rushed in a body amidships to where the long-boat was stowed.

Captain Dinks, however hesitating and undecided as he had shown himself
frequently of late in the navigation of the ship, now all at once
brought out in this emergency that courage and capacity for command
which he had really at bottom but which had been before dormant.

"Back for your lives, men, to your stations!" he shouted. "Although the
bows are stove in, the bulkhead forward will prevent the water from
flooding us beyond the fore compartment and give us time to run the ship
ashore, when we can all escape. No boat could live in the sea that's
now on; and if it did, it would run a worse chance of being stove in by
the ice than our poor vessel had!"

His words made the men hang back, all save Bill Moody and a couple of
others, who began casting off the lashings of the longboat; but Mr
McCarthy rushing down on the main deck and seizing a capstan bar with
which he threatened to brain the first man who resisted the captain's
authority, the unruly ones desisted for the time, slinking forwards
grumblingly.

"Carpenter," called out Captain Dinks, "sound the well and see what
damage has been done; and, Mr Adams, send the port watch aft to clear
away this top hamper. It is thumping away alongside and may make
another breach in our timbers!"

The captain's apparent calmness, combined with the sense of duty
paramount on ship-board, made the men set to work with a will; besides
which, they well knew that by acting together in harmony they had a
better chance of escape than by any mere individual effort. Mr
McCarthy, too, and Adams showed themselves equally as capable as Captain
Dinks in lending a hand and encouraging the crew--Frank Harness being
not one whit behindhand either; so that, within a very few minutes after
the consternation which the catastrophe had caused on its first
happening had passed away, all, recovering that equanimity habitual to
sailors in almost any predicament or calamity, were engaged in carrying
out the orders given them, as coolly as if the _Nancy Bell_ were snug at
anchor in some safe harbour. But, in what a sadly different position
was she now!

Battered as she had been by the storm in the Bay of Biscay and crippled
by the terrible cyclone off the Cape, which had left her tossing
rudderless and almost dismasted on the deep, her then condition was
favourable in co