of ice
detached themselves from the parent mass, and sailed out to meet the
vessel, crashing on one another, while it seemed to the men who watched
him that Wyllard tried how closely he could shave them before he ran the
_Selache_ off with a vicious drag at the wheel. None of them, however,
cared to utter a remonstrance.

They brought the schooner around when she had stretched out on the one
tack a couple of miles, and, standing in again close-hauled, found the
ice thicker than ever. Then she came around once more, and, until the
early dusk fell, Wyllard stood at the jarring helm or high up in the
forward shrouds.

"We can't work along the edge in the dark," he said to Dampier.

"Well," answered the skipper dryly, "it wouldn't be wise. We could stand
on as she's lying until half through the night, and then come round and
pick up the ice again a little before sun-up."

Wyllard made a sign of acquiescence. "Then," he said, "don't call me
until you're in sight of it. A day of this kind takes it out of one."

He moved aft heavily toward the deck-house, and Dampier watched him with
a smile of comprehension, for he was a man who had in his time made many
fruitless efforts, and bravely faced defeat. After all, it is possible
that when the final reckoning comes some failures will count.

For several hours the _Selache_ stretched out close-hauled into what
they supposed to be open water, and they certainly saw no ice. They hove
her to, and when the wind fell light brought her round and crept back
slowly upon the opposite tack. Wyllard had gone to sleep after his day
of anxious work, and daylight was just breaking when he next went out on
deck. There was scarcely a breath of wind and the heavy calm seemed
portentous and unnatural. The schooner lay lurching on a sluggish swell,
with the frost-wool thick on her rigging, and a belt of haze ahead of
her. The ice glimmered in the growing light, but in one or two places
stretches of blue-gray water seemed to penetrate it, and Dampier, who
strode aft when he saw Wyllard, said he believed that there must be an
opening somewhere.

"By the thickness of it, that ice has formed some time, and as we've
seen nothing but a skin it must have come from further north," he added.
"It gathered up under a point or in a bay most likely, until a shift of
wind broke it out, and the stream or breeze sent it down this way. That
seems to indicate that there can't be a great deal of it, but a few
d