Hook tower was saying,

"Wind blowing fifty-six miles an hour from the N. W."

Two wise men, who had been to sea a few times, insisted on staying
several miles inside of Sandy Hook, but the other man insisted a great
deal harder on going. Off we went after a very short debate. The wind
rattled the pilot-house windows, and if the door fell ajar a moment the
breeze nearly whipped it off and blew it away. The bay was covered with
floating ice. There were some cakes almost as big as a city block, and
some looked tiny enough to put in a glass of water; but most of them
were as long and wide as the deck of a big canal-boat. Every time one of
the big fellows crunched against our bow we couldn't help wondering
whether it was coming through. The moon flooded the vast field of white,
and made it look as if we were sailing over a great prairie. Now and
then we came to patches of clear blue water, and these danced in the
moon's rays like giant turquoises. The tug's condensed steam rolled and
bounded along, seeming like great masses of ivory. The intense cold
caused this curious effect. Everything was fairylike, except the harsh
grinding and cannonlike thumps of the ice.

Off the point of Sandy Hook we were almost clear of ice. Nobody could
see anything that looked like a steamship coming from the eastward. The
ice had kept the water quiet, but here in the open it was heaving and
pitching under the lash of the gale. We ran into the Horseshoe inside of
Sandy Hook, trying to get up to the landing, so that if we had very late
news to send we could telegraph it from Sandy Hook, instead of
Quarantine, which was an hour to the north of us. Ice was packed and
jammed so thick and tight inside the Horseshoe that not even an icicle
could be pushed into it. After our tug narrowly escaped being caught and
held fast for the night we backed out. No use trying to land.

"Mast-head light to the east'd!" sang out our skipper as we rounded the
point of the Hook. Has your heart ever begun to dance at the sight of a
school of bluefish when you were running down toward them with four
squids trailing from your cat-boat? Have you ever heard a deer come
crashing through the thicket toward your rifle? Imagine us, then, when
we heard those words. Every man whipped out a night-glass, or waited
eagerly for his neighbor's. A speck of yellow light on the horizon
crawled slowly up the blue sky.

"She's a liner," said our captain. "The ice and the hurricane ha