.

"Ice!" he roared. "Big pack of it right under your weather bow."

Dampier shouted something, but Wyllard did not hear what he said. He was
conscious only that he had to decide what he must do in the next few
seconds. If he let the _Selache_ come up to avoid the boat, there was
the ice ahead, and at the speed she was traveling it would infallibly
incrush her bows, while if he held her straight there was the boat close
in front of her. To swing her clear of both by going to leeward he must
bring the mainsail and boom-foresail over with a tremendous shock, but
that seemed preferable, and with his heart in his mouth he pulled his
helm up.

He fancied he cried out in warning, but was never sure of it, though
three men came running to seize the mainsheet. The schooner fell off a
little, swinging until the boom-foresail came over with a thunderous
bang and crash. She rolled down, heaving a wide strip of wet planking
out of the sea, and now for a moment or two there were great breadths of
canvas swung out on either hand. Then the ponderous main-boom went up
high above his head, and he saw three shadowy figures dragged aft as
they tried in vain to steady it The big mainsail was bunched up, a vast,
portentous shape above him, and he set his lips, and pulled up the helm
another spoke as it swung.

He never quite knew what happened after that. There was a horrible
crash, and the schooner appeared to be rolling over bodily. The spokes
he clung to desperately reft themselves from his grasp, the deck slanted
until one could not stand upon it, and something heavy struck him on the
head. He dropped, and Dampier flung himself upon the wheel above his
senseless body.

There was mad confusion, and a frantic banging of canvas as the schooner
came up beam to the wind, with her rent mainsail flogging itself to
tatters. Its ponderous boom was broken, and the mainmast-head had gone,
but it was not the first time the sealers had grappled with similar
difficulties, and Dampier kept his head. He had the boat to think of,
and she was somewhere to windward, hidden in the sudden darkness and the
turmoil of the quickly rising sea, but the schooner counted most of all!
His crew could scarcely hear him through the uproar made by the
thundering canvas, and the screaming of the wind, but the orders were
given, and from habit and the custom of their calling the men knew what
the commands must be.

They hauled a jib down, backed the fore-staysail,