ce together made it improbable that Le Maitre could rise again.

For a moment there was an eager looking at every space of blue water
that was left. If the drowning man could swim, he would surely make for
such an aperture.

"Put your pole down to him where he went in!" The men on the schooner
shouted this to O'Shea.

"Put the rope round your waist!" This last was yelled by the skipper,
perceiving that O'Shea himself was by no means safe.

A rope that had been thrown had a noose, through which O'Shea dashed his
arms; then, seizing the pole, he struck the butt-end between the blocks
of ice where Le Maitre had fallen.

It seemed to Caius that the pole swayed in his hands, as if he were
wrenching it from a hand that had gripped it strongly below; but it
might have been only the grinding of the ice.

O'Shea thrust the pole with sudden vehemence further down, as if in a
frantic effort to bring it better within reach of Le Maitre if he were
there; or, as Caius thought, it might have been that, feeling where the
man was, he stunned him with the blow.

Standing in a boat that was tipping and grinding among the ice, O'Shea
appeared to be exercising marvellous force and dexterity in thus using
the pole at all.

The wind was now propelling the schooner forward, and her pressure on
the ice ceased. O'Shea threw off the noose of the rope wildly, and
looked to the men on the vessel, as if quite uncertain what to do next.

It was a difficult matter for anyone to decide. To leave him there was
manifestly impossible; but if the schooner again veered round, the
jamming of the ice over the head of La Maitre would again occur. The men
on the schooner, not under good discipline, were all shouting and
talking.

"He's dead by now, wherever he is." The skipper made this quiet
parenthesis either to himself or to Caius. Then he shouted aloud: "Work
your boat through to us!"

O'Shea began poling vigorously. The ice was again floating loosely, and
it was but the work of a few minutes to push his heavy boat into the
open water that was in the wake of the schooner. There was a pause, like
a pause in a funeral service, when O'Shea, standing ankle-deep in the
water which his boat held, and the men huddled together upon the
schooner's deck, turned to look at all the places in which it seemed
possible that the body of Le Maitre might again be seen. They looked and
looked until they were tired with looking. The body had, no doubt,
floated up