s, easing out the
cable as the vessel rose on the tide. Corliss was at the wheel,
tugging and turning,--to what purpose was not very evident. But they
were doing their level best to save the vessel: that was plain. Capt.
Mazard stood with clinched hands watching them, every muscle and nerve
tense as wire.

I was hoping the most dangerous crisis had passed, when a tremendous
noise, like a thunder-peal low down to the earth, burst from the
ice-jammed arm of the inlet to the north-east. We turned instantly in
that direction. The whole pack of ice, filling the arm for near a
half-mile, was in motion, grating and grinding together. From where we
stood, the noise more resembled heavy, near thunder than anything else
I can compare it with.

"It's the tide bursting round from the north-east side!" exclaimed
Kit.

"Took it a little longer to come in among the islands on the north
side," said Raed, gazing intently at the fearful spectacle.

The noise nearly deafened us. The whole vast mass of ice--millions of
tons--was heaving and sliding, cake over cake. It had lain piled
fifteen or twenty feet above the water; but the tide surging under it
and through it caused it to mix and churn together. We could see the
water gushing up through crevices, sometimes in fountains of forty or
fifty feet, hurling up large fragments of ice. The phenomenon was
gigantic in all its aspects. To us, who expected every moment to see
it borne forward and crush the schooner, it was appalling. But the sea
filling in on the south, added to the narrowness of the arm, prevented
the jam from rushing through; though a great deal of ice did float
out, and, caught in the swirling currents, bumped pretty hard against
the vessel's sides. The schooner swayed about heavily; but the anchor
held miraculously, as we thought. Once we fancied it had given way,
and held our breath till the cable tightened sharply again. The
grating and thundering of the jam gradually dulled, muffled by the
water. Our thoughts reverted to our own situation. The sea had risen
within five feet of the place where we were standing. To get up here
in the morning we had been obliged to scale a precipice.

"It must have risen fully thirty feet," said Kit. "What a mighty
tide!"

"Why should it rush in here with so much greater violence than it does
down on the coast of Massachusetts or at Long Branch?" questioned
Wade. "How do you explain it, captain?"

"It is because the coasts, both ab