melled foully with him and the like
of him.

It was so still a day that the cold did not try me sorely: there was
vitality if not warmth in the light of the sun, and I was heated with
clambering. So I stayed a full half-hour after my companion had vanished
examining the ice about the schooner; which careful inspection repaid me
to the extent of giving me to see that if by blasts of gunpowder I could
succeed in rupturing the ice ahead of the schooner's bows there was a
very good chance of the mass on which she lay going adrift. Yet I will
not deny that though I recognized this business of dislocation as our
only chance--for I could see little or nothing to be done in the way of
building a boat proper to swim and ply--I foreboded a dismal issue to
our adventure, even should we succeed in separating this block from the
main. In fine, what I feared was that the weight of the schooner would
overset the ice and drown her and us.

I entered the ship and found Tassard roasting himself in the cook-house.

"How melancholy is this gloom," said I, "after the glorious white
sunshine!"

"Yes," said he, "but it is warm. That is enough for me. Curse the cold,
say I. It robs a man of all spirit. To grapple with this rigour one
should have fed all one's life on blubber. I defy a man to be brave when
he is half-frozen. I feel a match for any three men now; but on the
heights a flea would have made me run."

He pulled a pot from the bricks and filled his pannikin.

"I have been surveying the ice," said I, drawing to the furnace, "and
have very little doubt that if we wisely bestow the powder in great
quantities we shall succeed in dislocating the bed on which we are
lying."

"Good!" he cried.

"But after?" said I.

"What?"

"As much of this bed as may be dislodged will not be deep: icebergs, as
of course you know, capsize in consequence of their becoming top-heavy
by the wasting of the bulk that is submerged. This block will make but a
small berg should we liberate it, and I very much fear that the weight
of the schooner will overset it the instant we are launched."

"Body of Moses!" he cried angrily, knitting his brows, whereby he
stretched the scar to half its usual width, "what's to be done, then?"

"She is a full ship," said I, "and weighty. If the liberated ice be thin
she may sit up on it and keep it under. We have a right to hope in that
direction, perhaps. Yet there is another consideration. She may leak
like a siev