them rocks, and if-so-be that should turn out to
be the case, the whull on us, schooner, boat, and all hands, may drift
into the bay; for that there is a current setting from this quarter up
towards our island, I'm sartain of, by the feel of my oar, as we come
along."

"It may be so--the currents run all manner of ways, and field-ice may pass
the shoals, though a berg never can. I do not remember, nevertheless, to
have ever seen even a floe within the group--nothing beyond large cakes
that have got adrift by some means or other."

"I have, sir, though only once. A few days a'ter we got in, when I was
ship-keeper, and all hands was down under the rocks of the north eend, a
field come in at the northern entrance of the bay, and went out at the
southern. It might have been a league athwart it, and it drifted, as a
body might say, as if it had some one aboard to give it the right sheer.
Touch it did at the south cape, but just winding as handy as a craft could
have done it, in a good tide's way, out to sea it went ag'in, bound to the
south pole for-ti-'now."

"Well, this is good news, and may be the means of saving the Vineyard
craft in the end. We do seem to be setting bodily into the bay, and if we
can only get clear of that island, I do not see what is to hinder it. Here
is a famous fellow of a mountain to the northward, coming down before the
wind, as one might say, and giving us a cant into the passage. I should
think that chap must produce some sort of a change, whether it be for
better or worse."

"Ay, ay, sir," put in Thompson, who acted as a boat-steerer at need, "he
may do just that, but it is all he can do. Mr. Green and I sounded out
from the cove for a league or more, a few days since, and we found less
than twenty fathoms, as far as we went. That chap up to the nor'ard
there, draws something like a hundred fathoms, if he draws an inch. He
shows more above water than a first-rate's truck."

"That does he, and a good deal to spare. Thompson, do you and Todd remain
here, and look after the boat, while the rest of us will shape our course
for the schooner. She seems to be in a wicked berth, and 'twill be no more
than neighbourly to try to get her out of it."

Truly enough might Roswell call the berth of the Sea Lion, of the
Vineyard, by any expressive name that implied danger. When the party
reached her, they found the situation of that vessel to be as follows. She
had been endeavouring to work her way throu