er assistance. Roswell Gardiner was as good-hearted a fellow as ever
lived. He had a sufficient regard for his own interests, as well as for
those of others entrusted to his care; but, these main points looked
after, he would cheerfully have worked a month to relieve the Vineyard-men
from the peril that so plainly beset them. Setting his sails the instant
the boat was clear of the rocks, away he went, then, as fast as ash and
canvass could carry him, which was at a rate but little short of eight
knots in the hour.

As he was thus flying towards his object, our young mariner formed a
theory in his own mind, touching the drift of the ice in the adjacent
seas. It was simply this. He had sounded in entering the great bay, and
had ascertained that comparatively shallow water existed between the
south-eastern extremity of Sealer's Land and the nearest island opposite.
It was deep enough to admit the largest vessel that ever floated, and a
great deal more than this; but it was not deep enough to permit an
ice-berg to pass. The tides, too, ran in races among the islands, which
prevented the accumulation of ice at the southern entrance, while the
outer currents seemed to set everything past the group to allow of the
floating mountains to collect to the eastward, where they appeared to be
thronged. It was on the western verge of this wilderness of ice-bergs and
ice fields that the strange sail had been seen working her way towards the
group, which must be plainly in view from her decks, as her distance from
the nearest of the islands certainly did not exceed two leagues.

It required more than two hours for the whale-boat of Roswell to cross the
bay, and reach the margin of that vast field of ice, which was prevented
from drifting into the open space only by encountering the stable rocks of
the first of the group. Every eye was now turned in quest of an opening,
by means of which it might be possible to get further to the eastward.
One, at length, was discovered, and into it Gardiner dashed, ordering his
boat's crew to stretch themselves out at their oars, though every man with
him thought they were plunging into possible destruction. On the boat
went, however, now sheering to starboard, now to port, to avoid projecting
spurs of ice, until she had ploughed her way through a fearfully narrow,
and a deviating passage, that sometimes barely permitted them to go
through, until a spot was reached where the two fields which formed this