_The Dictator Charges an Ice Pan and Loses a Main Topmast_
"CAST loose!" was the order from the bridge.
The men scrambled to the berg and released the lines and ice-hooks.
The pack was still loosening under the rising breeze. To the east,
separating the sky from the ice, lay a long black streak--the water
of the open sea; a clear way to the broad, white fields. Once free of
the floe, the ship would speed northward to the Yellow Islands and
Cape William coasts. In a day and a night, the weather continuing
propitious, it would be, "Ho! for the ice. Ho! for the seals."
A lane of water opened up. "Go ahead," was the signal from the master
on the bridge, and the ship moved forward, with her nose turned to the
sea.
"Ha, Mr. Ackell!" exclaimed the captain, rubbing his horny hands.
"Looks t' be a fine time, man. We'll make the Yellow Islands at dawn
t'-morrow, if all goes well."
When the _Dictator_ had followed the lane to within one hundred yards
of free water, the advance was blocked by a great pan of ice, tight
jammed in the pack on either side. So fast and vagrantly was the floe
shifting its formation that what had been a clear path was now crossed
by a mighty barrier. Here was no slob ice to be forged through at full
steam, but a solid mass, like a bar of iron, lying across the path.
The ship was taken to the edge of the obstruction, and the captain and
mate went forward to the bow to gauge the strength of it. When they
came back to the bridge, the former had his teeth set.
"It's stiff work for the old ship," said the mate.
The captain growled as he pulled the signal lever for full speed astern.
"Take half a day to cut a way through," he said. "We'll ram it. Here,
b'y," to Archie, "get off the bridge. You're in the way."
Archie joined Billy Topsail on the forward deck. Neither had yet
experienced a charge on a pan of ice; but both had listened, open eyed,
to the sealing tales of daring that had brought disaster.
"I feel queer," Archie remarked.
"Cap'n Hand," said Billy, as though trying to revive his faith in the
old skipper, "he's a clever one. 'Tis all right."
"Make fast below," the captain shouted over the bridge rail.
The word was passed in a lively fashion. Tackle, boats, and all things
loose, were lashed in their places, as if for a great gale.
"Stop!" was the next signal. Then: "Full speed ahead!"
The blow had been launched! A moment later, the _Dictator_ was
ploughing forward, charging the pan, which she must strike like a
battering ram, and shiver to pieces. She was of solid oak, this good
ship, and builded for such attacks; steel plates would buckle and
spring under such shocks as she had many times triumphantly sustained.
The men were silent while they awaited the event. There was not a sound
save the hiss of the water at the ship's prows, and the _chug-chug_ of
the engines.
Archie caught his breath. His eyes were fixed on the fast vanishing
space of water. The thrill of the adventure was manifest in Billy
Topsail's sharp, quick breathing, and in his blue eyes, which were as
though about to pop out of their sockets.
"Stop!"
The engines abruptly ceased their labour. Only a fathom or two of water
lay ahead. The ship was about to strike. There was a long drawn instant
of suspense. Then came the blow!
It was a fearful shock. The vessel quivered, crushed her way on for a
space, and stopped dead, quivering still. A groan ran over her, from
stem to stern, as though she had been racked in every part. The main
topmast snapped and fell forward on the rigging with a crash.
A volley of cracks sounded from the ice, like the discharge of a
thousand rifles, slowly subsiding. Dead silence fell and continued for
a moment. Then the screw churned the water, and the ship backed off,
sound, but beaten; for the pan of ice lay, unbroken and unchanged, in
its place, with but a jagged bruise, where the blow had been struck.
"Aloft, there, some o' you, an' cut away that spar!" the captain
shouted. "Bill, get below, an' see if she's tight. Here, you, Dickson,
call the watch t' make sail. Mr. Girth," to the second mate, "take a
crew t' the ice. Blast that pan in three places. Lively, now, every man
o' you!"
Roaring subordinates, answering "Ay, ay, sirs!" rattling blocks and
chains, the fall of hurried feet, cries of warning and encouragement,
the engine's gasps: these sounds confounded the confusion, and
continued it, while the ship, snorting like a frightened horse, was
backed to her first position.
"He'll try it again," Archie gleefully observed to Billy.
The captain was pacing the bridge. Try it again? He was in a fever of
impatience to be at it! It was as though the pan of ice were a foe
needing only another and a heavier blow to be beaten down.
"Sure," said Billy, after a glance to the bridge, "he'll hit that pan
till he smashes it, if it takes till Tibb's Eve!"
"Tibb's Eve?"
"Sure, b'y. Does you not know what that is? 'Tis till the end o' the
world."
The ship was again to be launched against the pan. The second mate took
the blasting crew to the ice in the quarter boat; and he lost no time
about it, as the captain made sure. Up aloft went other hands to cut
away the broken spar and loose the canvas. Work was carried on under
the spur of the captain's harshened voice; for the captain was in a
passion to prove the quality of his ship.
The ice picks were plied as fast as arms could swing them. Soon the
mines were laid and fired. And when the dust of ice had fallen, and
the noise of the explosion had gone rumbling into the distance, three
gaping holes marked the pan at regular intervals from edge to edge.
"She's all tight below, sir," was the carpenter's report.
"Now, Mr. Ackell," said the captain, grimly, "in ten minutes we'll be
free o' the ice, or----"
They made all sail. After a quiet word or two of command, forth the
ship shot, heeling to the breeze, wind now allied with steam. Her
course was laid straight for the jagged bruise in the pan. There was
no stopping her now. The ice was cracked and shivered into a thousand
pieces. The ship forged on, grinding the cakes to fragments, heaping
them up, riding them down. She quivered when she struck, and strained
and creaked as she crushed her way forward, but she crept on,
invincible, adding inch to inch, foot to foot, until she swept out into
the unclogged water.
Then she shook the ice from her screw, and ran grandly into the
swelling sea.
"Hurrah!" the stout hearts roared.
"Hem--hem! Mr. Ackell," said the captain, with some emotion, "'tis a
great ship!"
* * * * *
It occurred to Archie that night, while he sat munching hard biscuit
with the captain before turning in, to ask a few questions about Tim
Tuttle. What was the matter with the man? Why did he go about with a
sneer or a frown forever on his face? Why was he not like all the rest
of the crew? Why did the crew seem to expect him to "do" something? Why
did the captain flush and bristle when Tuttle came near?
"Oh," the captain replied, with a laugh, "Tuttle had a fallin' out with
me when we was young. I think," he added, gravely, "that he wronged me.
But that's neither here nor there. I forgave him. The point is--an'
I've often run across the same thing in my life--that he won't forgive
_me_ for forgivin' _him_. That's odd, isn't it? But it's true. An' he's
aboard here t' make trouble; an' the men know that that's just what he
came for."
"But what did you ship him for, captain, if you knew that?"
The captain paused. "Well," he said, "because I'm only a man, I s'pose.
I couldn't help knockin' the chip off his shoulder."
"Do you think he _can_ make trouble?"
"I'd like t' see him try!" the captain burst out, wrathfully.
Tuttle's opportunity occurred the next day.