was utterly
beyond his power. He could have hove to the schooner while he got the
bigger boat over, and two men might have pulled towards the ice with the
breeze astern of them, but it was perfectly clear that they could have
neither made a landing nor have pulled her back again. It was also
uncertain whether he and the other man could have brought the schooner
round or have gotten more sail off her. He stood still until they heard
the wash of the sea upon the ice close to lee of them, and then it was a
hard-clenched hand he raised in sign to the helmsman.

"On the wind! Haul lee sheets!" he commanded.

The _Selache_ came round a little, heading off the ice, and when she
drove away with the foam seething white beneath one depressed rail and
the spray whirling high about her plunging bows, there was a tense look
in the white men's faces as they gazed into the thickening white haze to
lee of her. They thrashed her out until Dampier decided that there was
sufficient water between him and the ice, and then stripped most of the
sail off her, and she lay to until next morning, when they once more got
sail on her and ran in again. The breeze had fallen a little, it was
rather clearer, and they picked up the point, though it had somewhat
changed its shape. They got a boat over, and the two men who went off in
her found a few broken planks, a couple of oars, and Charly's cap
washing up and down in the surf. They had very little doubt as to what
that meant.

CHAPTER XXV

NEWS OF DISASTER

When the boat reached the schooner Dampier went off with one of the men,
and with difficulty contrived to make a landing on the ice only to find
it covered with a trackless sheet of slushy snow. Though Dampier
floundered shorewards a mile or two, there was nothing except the
shattered boat to suggest what had befallen Wyllard and his companions.
The skipper, who retraced his steps with a heavy heart, retained little
hope of seeing them again. Dampier waited two days until a strong breeze
blew him off the ice, which was rapidly breaking up, and he then stood
out for the open sea, where he hove the _Selache_ to for a week or so.
After that he proceeded northward to the inlet Wyllard and he had agreed
to.

Dampier was convinced that this was useless, but as the opening was
almost clear of ice he sailed the schooner in, and spent a week or two
scouring the surrounding country. He found it a desolation, still partly
covered with slus