"They knew better," said Donovan. "We could have knocked every one of
them on the head before they could have got up the side. It ain't as
if 'The Curlew' was loaded down, and lay low in the water. It's about
as much as a man can do to get from a boat up over the bulwarks. They
might have hit some of us with their carbines; but they couldn't have
boarded us, and they knew it."

"You noticed what he said about knocking the impudence out of us?"
said Wade. "That means that we shall hear a noise and have cannon-shot
whistling about our ears, I suppose."

"Shouldn't wonder," said Kit.

"Have to work to hurt us much, I reckon," remarked the captain. "The
distance across the ice-island here can't be much under two miles and
a half."

"Still, if they've got a rifled Whitworth or an Armstrong, they may
send some shots pretty near us," said Wade.

"The English used to kindly send you Southern fellows a few Armstrongs
occasionally, I have heard," said Raed.

"Yes, they did,--just by way of testing Lincoln's blockade. Very good
guns they were too. We ought to have had more of them. I tell you, if
they have a good twenty-four-pound Armstrong rifle, and a gunner that
knows anything, they may give us a job of carpenterwork--to stop the
holes."

"We might increase the distance another quarter of a mile," remarked
Kit, "by standing off from the ice and making the circle a little
larger."

"We'll do so," said the captain. "Port the helm, Bonney!"

During the next half-hour the schooner veered off two or three cables'
lengths. We watched the boat pulling back to the ship. It was nearly
an hour getting around the ice-island. Finally it ran in alongside,
and was taken up. With our glasses we could see that there was a good
deal of running and hurrying about the deck.

"Some tall swearing going on there!" laughed Kit.

"Now look out for your heads!" said Raed. "They are pointing a gun! I
can see the muzzle of it! It has an ugly look!"

Some five minutes more passed, when _puff_ came a little cloud of
smoke. We held our breaths. It gives a fellow a queer sensation to
know that a deadly projectile is coming for him. It might have been
four seconds, though it seemed longer, when we saw the ice fly up
rapidly in three or four places half a mile from the schooner as the
ball came skipping along, and, bounding off the edge of the ice-field,
plunged into the sea with a sullen _sudge_, throwing up a white
fountain ten or a dozen