lard, flinging off his dripping
clothing, crawled into his bunk and went quietly to sleep.

CHAPTER XVI

THE FIRST ICE

Before they hove to the _Selache_, daylight broke on a frothing sea,
across which scudded wisps of smoke-adrift and thin showers of snow.
With two little wet rags of canvas set the schooner lay almost head on
to the big combers. Having little way upon her, she lurched over instead
of ramming the waves, and though now and then one curled on board across
her rail it was not often that there was much heavy water upon her
slanted deck.

All around the narrow circle a leaden sky met the sea. It was bitterly
cold, and the spray stung the skin like half-spent pellets from a gun.
There was only one man, in turn, exposed to the weather, and he had
little to do but brace himself against the savage buffeting of the wind
as he clutched the wheel. The _Selache_, for the most part, steered
herself, lifting buoyantly while the froth came sluicing aft from her
tilted bows, falling off a little with a vicious leeward roll when a
comber bigger than usual smote her to weather, and coming up again
streaming to meet the next. Sometimes she forged ahead in what is called
at sea, by courtesy, a "smooth," and all the time shroud and stay to
weather gave out tumultuous harmonies, and the slack of every rope to
leeward blew out in unyielding curves.

Three of the white men lay sleeping or smoking in the little cabin,
which was partly raised above and partly sunk beneath the after-deck. It
was a reasonably strong structure, but it worked, and sweated, as they
sat at sea, and the heat of the stove had further opened up the seams in
it. Moisture dripped from the beams overhead, moisture trickled up and
down the slanting deck, there were great globules of water on the
bulk-heading, and everything, including the men's clothes and blankets,
was wet. The men lay in their bunks from necessity, because it was a
laborious matter to sit. They said very little since it was difficult to
hear anything amid the cataclysm of elemental sound. It became at length
almost a relief to turn out into inky darkness or misty daylight, dimmed
by flying spray, to take a turn at the jarring wheel.

For three days the bad weather continued, and then, when the gale broke
and a little pale sunshine streamed down on the tumbling sea, changing
the gray combers to flashing white and green, the skipper gave her a
double-reefed mainsail, part of th