replied.

"Neither am I," said he. "It's possible we might contrive such a
structure as would enable us to save our lives; but we have not the
skill to produce a vessel big enough to contain those chests as well as
ourselves, and the stores we should require to take. Besides, do you
know there is no labour more fatiguing than knocking such a craft as
this to pieces?"

This I very well believed, and it was truer of such a vessel as the
_Boca del Dragon_ that was a perfect bed of timber, and, like the
_Laughing Mary_, built as if she was to keep the seas for three hundred
years.

"And supposing," said he, "after infinite toil we succeeded in breaking
up as much of her as we wanted, what appliances have we for reshaping
the curved timbers? and where are we to lay the keel? Labour as we
might, the cold would prove too much for us. No, Mr. Rodney, to save the
treasure, ay, and to save ourselves, we must save the ship. Let us put
our minds to that."

In this way we would reason, and I confess he talked very sensibly,
taking very practical views, and indicating difficulties which my more
ardent and imaginative nature might have been blind to till they
immovably confronted me, and rendered days of labour useless. But how
was the ship to be saved? Was it possible to force Nature's hand; in
other words, to anticipate our release by the dissolution of the ice? We
were both agreed that this was the winter season in these seas, though
he instantly grew sulky if I mentioned the month, for he was as certain
I was as mad in this, as in the year, and he would eye me very
malignantly if I persisted in calling it July. But, as I have said, we
were both agreed that the summer was to come, and though we could not
swear that the ice was floating northwards, we had a right to believe
so, in spite of the fierceness of the cold, this being the trick of all
these frozen estates when they fetch to the heights under which we lay;
and we would ask each other whether we should let our hands and minds
rest idle and wait to see what the summer would do for us, or essay to
launch the schooner.

"If," said he, "we wait for the ice to break up it may break us up too."

"Yes," said I, "but how are we to cut the vessel out of the ice in which
she is seated to above the garboard streak? Waiting is odious and
intolerable work; but my own conviction is, nothing is to be done till
the sun comes this way, and the ice crumbles into bergs. The island is
l