was completely
cut off from its possession. To think of sawing through ice as thick as
that of the floe, for any material distance, would be like a project to
tunnel the Alps.

Melancholy was the meeting between Roswell and Daggett that morning. The
former was too manly and generous to indulge in reproaches, else might he
well have told the last that all this was owing to him. There is a
singular propensity in us all to throw the burthen of our own blunders on
the shoulders of other folk. Roswell had a little of this weakness,
overlooking the fact that he was his own master; and as he had come to the
group by himself, he ought to have left it in the same manner, as soon as
his own particular task was accomplished. But Roswell did not see this
quite as distinctly as he saw the fact that Daggett's detentions and
indirect appeals to his better feelings had involved him in all these
difficulties. Still, while thus he felt, he made no complaint.

All hope of getting north that season now depended on the field-ice's
drifting away from the Great Bay before it got fairly frozen in. So jammed
and crammed with it did every part of the bay appear to be, however, that
little could be expected from that source of relief. This Daggett admitted
in the conversation he held with Roswell, as soon as the latter joined him
on the rocky terrace beneath the house.

"The wisest thing we can do, then," replied our hero, "will be to make as
early preparations as possible to meet the winter. If we are to remain
here, a day gained now will be worth a week a month hence. If we should
happily escape, the labour thus expended will not kill us."

"Quite true--very much as you say, certainly," answered Daggett, musing.
"I was thinking as you came ashore, Gar'ner, if a lucky turn might not be
made in this wise:--have a good many skins in the wreck, you see, and you
have a good deal of ile in your hold--now, by starting some of that ile,
and pumping it out, and shooking the casks, room might be made aboard of
you for all my skins. I think we could run all of the last over on them
wheels in the course of a week."

"Captain Daggett, it is by yielding so much to your skins that we have got
into all this trouble."

"Skins, measure for measure, in the way of tonnage, will bring a great
deal more than ile."

Roswell smiled, and muttered something to himself, a little bitterly. He
was thinking of the grievous disappointment and prolonged anxiety that i