ople. God send she's only an old tramp. At those
lifeboats there!" he shouted. "Swing the davits outboard, and pass your
painters forward. Hump yourselves, now."

"There's a lot of ice here, sir," came a grumbling voice out of the
darkness, "and the boats are frozen on to the chocks. We've got to
hammer it away before they'll hoist. The falls are that froze, too, that
they'll not render--"

"You call yourself a mate and hold a master's ticket, and want to get a
ship of your own!"--Kettle vaulted over the rail on to the top of the
fiddley, and made for his second in command. "Here, my man, if your
delicate fingers can't do this bit of a job, give me that marlinspike.
By James! do you hear me? Give up the marlinspike. Did you never see a
boat iced up before? Now then, carpenter. Are you worth your salt? Or am
I to clear both ends in this boat by myself?"

So, by example and tongue, Captain Kettle got his boats swung outboard,
and the _Flamingo_, with her engines working at an unusual strain,
surged rapidly nearer and nearer to the blaze.

On shore a house on fire at any hour draws a crowd. At sea, in the bleak
cold wastes of the water desert, even one other shipload of sympathizers
is too often wished for vainly. Wind, cold, and breakdowns of machinery
the sailor accepts with dull indifference; shipwrecks, strandings, and
disease he looks forward to as part of an inevitable fate; but fire
goes nearer to cowing him than all other disasters put together; and the
sight of his fellow-seamen attacked by these same desolating flames
arouses in him the warmest of his sympathy, and the full of his
resourcefulness. Moreover, in Kettle's case, he had known the feel of a
ship afire under his own feet, and so he could appreciate all the better
the agony of these others.

But meanwhile, as the _Flamingo_ made her way up wind against the
charging seas, a fear was beginning to grip the little shipmaster by the
heart that was deep enough to cause him a physical nausea. The burning
steamer ahead grew every minute more clear as they raced toward her. She
was on fire forward, and she lay almost head-on toward them, keeping her
stern to the seas, so that the wind would have no help in driving the
flames aft, and making her more uninhabitable.

From a distance it had been hard to make out anything beyond great
stacks of yellow flame, topped by inky, oily smoke, which drove in thick
columns down the wind. As they drew nearer, and her siz