For two hours the trio plodded silently onward over the ice-belt by the
light of a clear, starry sky. At the end of that time clouds began to
gather to the westward, rendering the way less distinct, but still
leaving sufficient light to render travelling tolerably easy. Then they
came to a part of the coast where the ice-belt clung close to a line of
perpendicular cliffs of about three miles in extent. The ice-belt here
was about twenty feet broad. On the left the cliffs referred to rose
sheer up several hundred feet; on the right the ice-belt descended only
about three feet to the floes. Here our three adventurous travellers
were unexpectedly caught in a trap. The tide rose so high that it raised
the sea-ice to a level with the ice-belt, and, welling up between the
two, completely overflowed the latter.

The travellers pushed on as quickly as possible, for the precipices on
their left forbade all hope of escape in that direction, while the gap
between the ice-belt and the floes, which was filled with a gurgling
mixture of ice and water, equally hemmed them in on the right. Worse
than all, the tide continued to rise, and when it reached half-way to
their knees, they found it dangerous to advance for fear of stepping
into rents and fissures which were no longer visible.

"What's to be done noo?" inquired Saunders, coming to a full stop, and
turning to Buzzby with a look of blank despair.

"Dun'no'," replied Buzzby, with an equally blank look of despair; as he
stood with his legs apart and his arms hanging down by his side--the
very personification of imbecility. "If I wos a fly I'd know wot to do.
I'd walk up the side o' that cliff till I got to a dry bit, and then I'd
stick on. But, not bein' a fly, in coorse I can't."

Buzzby said this in a recklessly facetious tone, and Tom Green followed
it up with a remark to the effect that "he'd be blowed if he ever wos in
sich a fix in his life;" intimating his belief, at the same time, that
his "toes wos freezin'."

"No fear o' that," said the second mate; "they'll no freeze as lang as
they're in the water. We'll just have to stand here till the tide goes
doon."

Saunders said this in a dogged tone, and immediately put his plan in
force by crossing his arms and planting his feet firmly on the submerged
ice and wide apart. Buzzby and Green, however, adopted the wiser plan of
moving constantly about within a small circle, and after Saunders had
argued for half-an-hour as to