e boom-foresail, and a jib or two, and
thrashed her slowly back to the northward on the starboard tack. More
than one of the men glanced over the taffrail longingly as the schooner
gathered way. She was fast, and with a little driving and that breeze
over her quarter she would bear them south toward warmth and ease at
some two hundred miles a day, while the way they were going it would be
a fight for every fathom with bitter, charging seas, and there lay ahead
of them only cold and peril and toil incredible.

There are times at sea when human nature revolts from the strain that
the overtaxed body must bear, the leaden weariness of worn-out limbs,
and the subconscious effort to retain warmth and vitality in spite of
the ceaseless lashing of the icy gale. Then, as aching muscles grow lax,
the nervous tension becomes more insupportable, unless, indeed, utter
weariness breeds indifference to the personal peril each time the decks
are swept by a frothing flood, or a slippery spar must be clung to with
frost-numbed and often bleeding hands. The men on the _Selache_ knew
this, and it was to their credit that they obeyed when Dampier gave the
word to put the helm up and trim the sheets over. Wyllard, however,
stood a little apart with a hard-set face, and he looked forward over
the plunging bows, for he was troubled by a sense of responsibility such
as he had not felt since he had, one night several years before, asked
for volunteers. He realized that an account of these men's lives might
be demanded from him.

It was a fortnight later, and they had twice made a perilous landing
without finding any sign of life on or behind the hammered beach, when
they ran into the first of the ice. The gray day was near its end. The
long heave faintly twinkling here and there, ran sluggishly after them.
When creeping through a belt of haze they came into sight of several
blurrs of grayish white that swung with the dim, green swell. The
_Selache_ was slowly lurching over it with everything aloft to the
topsails then, and Dampier glanced at the ice with a feeling of deep
anxiety.

"Earlier than I expected," he commented. "Anyway, it's a sure thing
there's plenty more where that came from."

"Big patch away to starboard!" cried a man in the foremast shrouds.

Dampier turned to Wyllard. "What are you going to do?"

"What's most advisable?"

The skipper looked grave. "Well," he said, "that's quite simple. Get out
of this, and head her sout