eme. There is much to be done."

"Give me a sketch of your plans, that I may understand you," he
exclaimed, continuing to eat very heartily.

"First of all," said I, "we shall have to break the powder-barrels out
of the magazine and hoist them on deck. There are tackles, I suppose?"

"You should be able to find what you want among the boatswain's stores
in the run," he replied.

"There are some splits wide enough to receive a whole barrel of powder,"
said I. "I counted four such yawns all happily lying in a line athwart
the ice past the bows. I propose to sink these barrels twenty feet deep,
where they must hang from a piece of spar across the aperture."

He nodded.

"Have you any slow-matches aboard?"

"Plenty among the gunner's stores," he replied.

"There are but you and me," said I; "these operations will take time. We
must mind not to be blown up by one barrel whilst we are suspending
another. We shall have to lower the barrels with their matches on fire
and they must be timed to burn an hour."

"Ay, certainly, at least an hour," he exclaimed. "Two hours would be
better."

"Well, that must depend upon the number of parcels of matches we meet
with. There will be a good many mines to spring, and one must not
explode before another. 'Tis the united force of the several blasts
which we must reckon on. The contents of at least four more barrels of
powder we must distribute amongst the other chinks and splits in such
parcels as they will be able to receive."

"And then?"

"And then," said I, "we must await the explosion and trust to the mercy
of Heaven to help us."

He made a hideous face, as if this was a sort of talk to nauseate him,
and said, "Do you propose that we should remain on board or watch the
effects from a distance?"

"Why, remain on board of course," I answered. "Suppose the mines
liberated the ice on which the schooner lies and it floated away, what
should we, watching at a distance, do?"

"True," cried he, "but it is cursed perilous. The explosion might blow
the ship up."

"No, it will not do that. We shall be bad engineers if we bring such a
thing about. The danger will be--providing the schooner is released--in
her capsizing, as I have before pointed out."

"Enough!" cried he, charging his pannikin for the third time. "We must
chance her capsizing."

"If I had a crew at my back," said I, "I would carry an anchor and cable
to the shoulder of the cliff at the end of the slope to ho