_In Which the Men are Lost, the Dictator is Nipped and
Captain Hand Sobs, "Poor Sir Archibald!"_
WHEN the last party of hunters had been landed from the _Dictator_,
the ship was taken off the ice field; and there she hung, in idleness,
awaiting the end of the hunt. It was then long past noon. The darkening
sky in the northeast promised storm and an early night more surely
than ever. It fretted the captain. He was accountable to the women and
children of Green Bay for the lives of the men; so he kept to the deck,
with an eye on the weather: and while the gloom deepened and spread, a
storm of anxiety gathered in his heart--and, at last, broke in action.
"Call the watch, Mr. Ackell!" he cried, sharply. "We'll wait no longer."
He ran to the bridge, signalled "Stand by!" to the engine-room, and
ordered the firing of the recall gun. The men of the last party were
within ear of the report. It brought all work on the ice to a close.
The men waited only to pile the dead seals in heaps and mark possession
with flags.
"Again, mate!" shouted the captain. "They're long about comin', it
seems t' me."
A second discharge brought the men on a run to the edge of the ice.
It was evident that some danger threatened. They ran at full speed,
crowded aboard the waiting boats, and were embarked as quickly as might
be. Then the ship steamed off to the second field, five miles distant,
to pick up the second party. When she came within hearing distance,
three signal guns were fired, with the result that, when she came to,
the men were waiting for the boats.
It was a run of six miles to the field upon which the first party had
been landed--part of the way in and out among the pans. The storm
had now taken form and was advancing swiftly, and the fields in the
northeast were hidden in a spreading darkness. The wind had risen to
half a gale, and it was beginning to snow. A run of six miles! The
captain's heart sank. When he looked at the black clouds rising from
behind the coast, he doubted that the _Dictator_ could do it in time.
An appalling fortune seemed to be descending on the men on the ice.
"But we may make it, mate," said the captain, "if----"
"Ay, sir?"
"If they's no ice comin' with the gale."
The ship had been riding the open sea, skirting the floe. Now she came
to the mouth of a broad lane, which wound through the fields. It was
the course; along that lane, at all hazards, she must thread her way.
The danger was extreme. The wind, blowing a gale, might force the great
fields together. Or, if ice came with the wind, the lanes might be
choked up. In either event, what chance would there be for the men? In
the first event, which was almost inevitable, what chance would there
be for the _Dictator_ herself?
"Cap'n Hand, sir," the mate began, nervously, "is you goin'----"
The captain looked up in amazement when the mate stammered and stopped.
"Well, sir?" he said.
"Is you goin' inside the ice, sir?"
"Is I goin' WHAT?" roared the captain, turning upon him. "Is I goin'
WHAT, sir?"
It was sufficient. The captain _was_ going among the fields. The mate
needed no plainer answer to his question.
"Beg pardon, sir," he muttered meekly. "I thought you was."
"Huh!" growled the captain.
When the ship passed into the lane, the storm burst overhead. The
scunner in the foretop was near blinded by the driven snow. His voice
was swept hither and thither by the wind. Directions came to the bridge
in broken sentences. The captain dared not longer drive the vessel at
full speed.
"Half speed!" he signalled.
The ship crept along. For half an hour, while the night drew on, not a
word was spoken, save the captain's quiet "Port!" and "Starboard!" into
the wheelhouse tube. Then the mate heard the old man mutter:
"Poor b'y! Poor Sir Archibald!"
No other reference was made to the boy. In the captain's mind,
thereafter, for all the mate knew, young Archibald Armstrong, the
owner's son, was merely one of a crew of sixty men, lost on the floe.
"Ice ahead!" screamed the lookout in the bow.
The ship was brought to a stop. The lane she had been following had
closed before her. The mate went forward.
"Heavy ice, sir," he reported.
Broken ice, then, had come down with the wind. It had been carried into
the channels, choking them.
"Does you see water beyond, b'y?" the captain shouted.
"'Tis too thick t' tell, sir."
The captain signalled "Go ahead!" The chance must be taken. To be
caught between two fields in a great storm was a fearful situation.
So the ship pushed into the ice, moving at a snail's pace, labouring
hard, and complaining of the pressure upon her ribs. Soon she made no
progress whatever. The screw was turning noisily; the vessel throbbed
with the labour of the engines; but she was at a standstill.
"Stuck, sir!" exclaimed the mate.
"Ay, mate," the captain said, blankly, "stuck."
The ship struggled bravely to force her way on; but the ice, wedged all
about her, was too heavy.
"God help the men!" said the captain, as he signalled for the stopping
of the engines. "We're stuck!"
"An' God help us," the mate added, in the same spirit, "if the fields
come together!"
Conceive the situation of the _Dictator_. She lay between two of many
vast, shifting fields, all of immeasurable mass. The captain had
deliberately subjected her to the chances in an effort to rescue the
men for whom he was accountable to the women and children of Green
Bay. She was caught; and if the wind should drive the fields together,
her case would be desperate, indeed. The slow, mighty pressure exerted
by such masses is irresistible. The ship would either be crushed to
splinters, or--a slender chance--she would be lifted out of danger for
the time.
Had there been no broken ice about her, destruction would have been
inevitable. Her hope now lay in that ice; for, with the narrowing of
the space in which it floated, it would in part be forced deep into the
water, and in part be crowded out of it. If it should get under the
ship's bottom, it would exert an increasing upward pressure; and that
pressure might be strong enough to lift the vessel clear of the fields.
The captain had known of such cases; but now he smiled when he called
them to mind.
"Take a week's rations an' four boats t' the ice, mate," he directed,
"an' be quick about it. We'll sure have t' leave the ship."
While the mate went about this work, the captain paced the bridge,
regardless of the cold and storm. It was dark, the wind was bitter and
strong, the snow was driving past; but still he paced the bridge, now
and then turning towards the darkness of that place, far off on the
floe, where his men, and the young charge he had been given, were lost.
The women of Green Bay would not forgive him for lives lost thus; of
that he was sure. And the lad--that tender lad----
"Poor little b'y!" he thought. "Poor Sir Archibald!"
For relief from this torturing thought, he went among the men. He found
most of them gathered in groups, gravely discussing the situation of
the ship. In the forecastle, some were holding a "prayer-meeting"; the
skipper paused to listen to the singing and to the solemn words that
followed it. Here and there, as he went along, he spoke an encouraging
word; here and there dropped a word of advice, as, "Timothy, b'y, you
got too much on your back; 'tis not wise t' load yourself down when
you takes t' the ice," and the like; here and there, in a smile or a
glance, he found the comforting assurance that the men knew he had
tried to do his duty.
"Cap'n John Hand," he thought, when he returned to the bridge, "you
hasn't got a coward aboard!"
The mate came up to report. "We've the boats on the ice, sir," he said,
"an' I've warned the crew t' make ready."
"Very well, Mr. Ackell; they's nothin' more t' be done."
"Hark, sir!"
The ice about the ship seemed to be stirring. Beyond--from far off in
the distance to windward--the noise of grinding, breaking ice-pans
could be heard. There was no mistaking the warning. The moment of peril
was at hand.
"The fields is comin' together, sir."
"Call the crew, Mr. Ackell," said the captain, quietly.
The men gathered on deck. They were silent while they waited. The
only sounds came from the ice--and from overhead, where the wind was
screaming through the rigging.
"'Tis comin', sir," said the mate.
"Ay."
"God help us!"
"'Twill soon be over, Mr. Ackell," observed the captain.
He awaited the event with a calm spirit.