the hold.'

"For a minute, I think, I could not speak, for this new misfortune quite
stunned me.

"'Have you found the leak?' I asked at length.

"'Not yet, sir,' he answered. 'It is somewhere forward, though.'

"'Make a close search for it, and let me know at once,' I said.

"He went below, and in about half an hour reported that one of the
plates in our starboard bow had been cracked by the ice. The break was
below the water-line, but I succeeded in stopping it up by melting some
tar, which I fortunately had aboard, and pouring it into the crack. Our
engine was stopped altogether now, because the ice was so thick that it
was dangerous to push the vessel ahead. There was a good deal of sea
underrunning the ice, and it required the greatest skill and
watchfulness to prevent disaster. To avoid injury altogether was quite
impossible. At four bells in the morning watch on July 23d, while we
were still in the ice-field, there was a jar and a crash. I sprang from
my bunk, in which I had been lying dressed, and jumped on deck.

"'What in the world has happened now?' I cried.

"'Carried away our rudder, sir,' called the second mate, who was leaning
over the taffrail.

"The pale-faced boy came up to me, and looking into my face with his
great solemn eyes, said,

"'What shall we do now?'

"'Rig another,' I answered as bravely as I could.

"I'm not going to describe to you the rigging of a jury-rudder, because
it's one of the commonest feats of sea-engineering; but I will tell you
that it cost us a day's hard work, and required the use of some spare
stuff which I would have been very glad to put into the furnaces, for
the coal supply was becoming smaller and smaller, and we were seven
hundred miles from the nearest port. Well, we were twelve long,
heart-breaking days in the ice. Fortunately it rained heavily during two
of those days, and by using everything we had on board, including the
boats, to catch the rain, I succeeded in fairly replenishing the supply
of water in our tanks. We were fortunate in having an unusually large
supply of food, and this alone saved us from falling into the straits of
hunger. We had plenty of everything except beef and pork. These articles
were exhausted, and we had to depend upon canned food, bread, crackers,
tea, and coffee. But we had enough of those to last us three months, so
that I did not deem it necessary to shorten the allowances. On August 2d
we got clear of the ice, and began