ject previously than the rest of us had done.
The sudden appearance of the ship had therefore taken him less by
surprise than it did us.

"It looks as if they were going to board us--if we let them," he said
quietly. "That's the way it looks; isn't it, captain?"

"I should say that it did, decidedly," Capt. Mazard replied.

"Boys!" exclaimed Raed, looking round to us, and to the sailors, who
had gathered about us in some anxiety,--"boys! if we let those
fellows yonder board us, in an hour we shall all be close prisoners,
in irons perhaps, and down in the hold of that ship. We shall be
carried out to Fort York, kept there a month in a dungeon likely as
any way, then sent to England to be tried--for daring to sail into
Hudson Bay and trade with the Esquimaux! What say, boys?--shall we let
them come aboard and take us?"

"No, sir!" cried Kit.

"Not much!" exclaimed Donovan. "We'll fight first!"

"Capt. Mazard," continued Raed, "I'm really sorry to have been the
means of placing you in such a predicament. 'The Curlew' will
undoubtedly be condemned if seized. They would clap a prize-crew into
her the first thing, and start her for England. But there's no need of
giving her up to them. That's not a ship-of-war. We've got arms, and
can fight as well as they. We can beat off that boat, I'll be bound to
say: and as for their ship, I don't believe they'll care to take her
up here between the islands; and if they do,--why, we can sail away
from them. But, for my own part, I had rather fight, and take an even
chance of being killed, than be taken prisoner, and spend five months
below decks."

"Fight it is, then!" exclaimed the captain doggedly.

By this time the boat was pulling up the channel to the north of the
ice-field, within a mile of us.

"We might crowd sail, and stand away to the north of the islands
here," I argued.

"Yes; but we don't know how this roadstead ends farther on," replied
Raed.

"It may be choked up with ice or small islets," said Kit. "In that
case we should run into a trap, where they would only have to follow
us to be sure of us. We might abandon the schooner, and get ashore;
but that would be nearly as bad as being taken prisoner--on this
coast."

"Here's clear sailing round this ice-field," remarked the captain. "My
plan is to keep their ship on the opposite of it from us. If they give
chase, we'll sail round it."

"But how about their boat?" demanded Wade.

"We must beat it off!" exc