rmed. Not a man had left her; but there she was,
placed on the shore, some twenty feet above the surface of the sea, on
rocks worn smooth by the action of the waves! Had the season been
propitious, and did the injury stop here, it might have been possible to
get the craft into the water again, and still carry her to America.

But the floe was not yet arrested. Cake succeeded cake, one riding over
another, until a wall of ice rose along the shore, that Roswell and his
companions, with all their activity and courage, had great difficulty in
crossing. They succeeded in getting over it, however; but when they
reached the unfortunate schooner, she was literally buried. The masts were
broken, the sails torn, rigging scattered, and sides stove. The Sea Lion
of Martha's Vineyard was a worthless wreck--worthless as to all purposes
but that of being converted into materials for a smaller craft, or to be
used as fuel.

All this had been done in ten minutes! Then it was that the vast
superiority of nature over the resources of man made itself apparent. The
people of the two vessels stood aghast with this sad picture of their own
insignificance before their eyes. The crew of the wreck, it is true, had
escaped without difficulty; the movement having been as slow and steady as
it was irresistible. But there they were, in the clothes they had on, with
all their effects buried under piles of ice that were already thirty or
forty feet in height.

"She looks as if she was built there, Gar'ner!" Daggett coolly observed,
as he stood regarding the scene with eyes as intently riveted on the wreck
as human organs were ever fixed on any object. "Had a man told me this
_could_ happen, I would not have believed him!"

"Had she been a three-decker, this ice would have treated her in the same
way. There is a force in such a field that walls of stone could not
withstand."

"Captain Gar'ner--Captain Gar'ner," called out Stimson, hastily; "we'd
better go back, sir; our own craft is in danger. She is drifting fast in
towards the cape, and may reach it afore we can get to her!"

Sure enough, it was so. In one of the changes that are so unaccountable
among the ice, the floe had taken a sudden and powerful direction towards
the entrance of the Great Bay. It was probably owing to the circumstance
that the inner field had forced its way past the cape, and made room for
its neighbour to follow. A few of Daggett's people, with Daggett himself,
remained