of his own
people, to offer any assistance he could give. After looking at the ice
immediately around his own craft, where all seemed to be right, he called
over the names of six of his men, ordered them to eat a warm breakfast,
and to prepare to accompany him.

In twenty minutes Roswell was leading his little party across the ice,
each man carrying an axe, or some other implement that it was supposed
might be of use. It was by no means difficult to proceed; for the surface
of the floe, one seemingly more than a league in extent, was quite smooth,
and the snow on it was crusted to a strength that would have borne a team.

"The water between the ice and the rocks is a much narrower strip than I
had thought," said Roswell, to his constant attendant, Stimson. "Here, it
does not appear to be a hundred yards in width!"

"Nor is it, sir--whew--this trotting in so cold a climate makes a man puff
like a whale blowing--but, Captain Gar'ner, that schooner will be cut in
two before we can get to her. Look, sir; the floe has reached the rocks
already, quite near her; and it does not stop the drift at all,
seemingly."

Roswell made no reply; the state of the Vineyard Lion did appear to be
much more critical than he had previously imagined. Until he came nearer
to the land, he had formed no notion of the steady power with which the
field was setting down on the rocks on which the broken fragments were now
creeping like creatures endowed with life. Occasionally, there would be
loud disruptions, and the movement of the floe would become more rapid;
then, again, a sort of pause would succeed, and for a moment the
approaching party felt a gleam of hope. But all expectations of this sort
were doomed to be disappointed.

"Look, sir!" exclaimed Stimson--"she went down afore it twenty fathoms at
that one set. She must be awful near the rocks, sir!"

All the men now stopped. They knew they were powerless: and intense
anxiety rendered them averse to move. Attention appeared to interfere with
their walking on the ice; and each held his breath in expectation. They
saw that the schooner, then less than a cable's length from them, was
close to the rocks; and the next shock, if anything like the last, must
overwhelm her. To their astonishment, instead of being nipped, the
schooner rose by a stately movement that was not without grandeur, upheld
by broken cakes that had got beneath her bottom, and fairly reached the
shelf of rocks almost unha