erg.

"Amos! Amos! Will you suffer it?" cried the guardsman in French.
"My honour will not permit me to leave him thus. I should feel it a
stain for ever."

"Tomlinson, you would not leave him! Go on board and force him to
come."

"The man is not living who could force him to do what he had no mind
for."

"He may change his purpose."

"He never changes his purpose."

"But you cannot leave him, man! You must at least lie by and pick him
up."

"The boat leaks like a sieve," said the mate. "I will take her to the
berg, leave you all there, if we can find footing, and go back for the
captain. Put your heart into it, my lads, for the sooner we are there
the sooner we shall get back."

But they had not taken fifty strokes before Adele gave a sudden scream.

"My God!" she cried, "the ship is going down!"

She had settled lower and lower in the water, and suddenly with a sound
of rending planks she thrust down her bows like a diving water-fowl, her
stern flew up into the air, and with a long sucking noise she shot down
swifter and swifter until the leaping waves closed over her high poop
lantern. With one impulse the boat swept round again and made backwards
as fast as willing arms could pull it. But all was quiet at the scene
of the disaster. Not even a fragment of wreckage was left upon the
surface to show where the _Golden Rod_ had found her last harbour.
For a long quarter of an hour they pulled round and round in the
moonlight, but not a glimpse could they see of the Puritan seaman, and
at last, when in spite of the balers the water was washing round their
ankles, they put her head about once more, and made their way in silence
and with heavy hearts to their dreary island of refuge.

Desolate as it was, it was their only hope now, for the leak was
increasing and it was evident that the boat could not be kept afloat
long. As they drew nearer they saw with dismay that the side which
faced them was a solid wall of ice sixty feet high without a flaw or
crevice in its whole extent. The berg was a large one, fifty paces at
least each way, and there was a hope that the other side might be more
favourable. Baling hard, they paddled round the corner, but only to
find themselves faced by another gloomy ice-crag. Again they went
round, and again they found that the berg increased rather than
diminished in height. There remained only one other side, and they
knew as they rowed round to it that their lives h