With her rivals following close, she struck the floe, broke a way through, and pushed on, with a great noise, but slowly, surely; and she was soon in the open sea. The course was then shaped northeast, for it appeared that open water lay in that direction. The floe retarded the ship's progress, but could not stop it; the ice pans crashed against her prow and scraped her sides, but she was staunch enough to withstand every shock; and so, gaining on the rest of the fleet, she crept out to sea, in the teeth of the rising gale.

At two o'clock in the morning, Archie Armstrong was still on the bridge with the captain and mate. The lights of the fleet were lost in the night behind. The Dictator had laboured through the first field of ice into open water. The sea was dotted with great, white "pans," widely scattered; and, as the captain had feared, there were signs of bergs in the darkness roundabout. The waves were rising, spume crested, on every hand; at intervals, they broke over the bows, port and starboard, with frightful violence. Gusts of wind whirled the spray to the bridge, where it soon sheathed men and superstructure in ice.

"Send a lookout aloft, Mr. Ackell," said the captain, after he had long and anxiously peered straight ahead.

The thud of ice, as the seas hurled it against the ship's prows, the hiss and crash of the waves, the screaming of the gale, drowned the captain's order.

"Pass the word for Bill o' Burnt Bay!" he roared.

A short, brawny man, of middle age, who had not missed a voyage to the ice in twenty years, soon appeared in response to the call, which had gone from mouth to mouth through the ship. Archie was inclined to smile when he observed Bill's unkempt, sandy moustache, which was curiously given an upward twist at one side, and a downward twist at the other. Nevertheless, he was strongly attracted to him; for he looked like a man who could be trusted to the limit of his courage and strength.

"Take a glass t' the nest, b'y, an' look sharp for bergs," the captain ordered. "Don't stay up there. Come back an' report t' me here."

The man went off with a brisk, "Ay, ay, sir!" It was his duty to clamber to the crow's-nest—a cask lashed to the topmast just below the masthead—and to sweep the sea for signs of bergs.

"'Tis more than I bargained for, Mr. Ackell," the captain went on, to the mate, in an anxious undertone, which, however, Archie managed to catch; and it may be added that the lad's heart jumped into his throat, and had a hard time getting back into place again.

"Dirty weather, sir!" the mate agreed. "I'm thinkin' we're close to some heavy ice."

"Well," said the captain, after a pause, "keep her head as she points now. I'll have a look 'tween decks."

Archie was tempted to ask the captain "if there was any danger." The foolish question was fairly on the tip of his tongue; but his better sense came to his rescue in time. Danger? Of course, there was! There was always danger. He had surely not come on a sealing voyage expecting none! But catastrophe was not yet inevitable. At any rate, it was the captain's duty to sail the ship. He was responsible to the owners, and to the families of the crew; the part of the passenger was but bravely to meet the fortune that came. So, completely regaining his courage, Archie followed the captain below.

'Tween decks the stout hearts were rollicking still. The working crew had duty to do, every man of them; but the two hundred hunters, who had been taken along to wield gaff and club, were sprawled in every place, singing, laughing, yarning, scuffling, for all the world like a pack of boys: making light of discomfort, and thinking not at all of danger, for the elation of departure still possessed them. Had any misgiving still remained with Archie, the sight of this jolly, careless crowd of hunters would have quieted it. They were not alarmed. Then, why should he be? Doubtless, it was responsibility that made the captain anxious.

In the improvised cabin aft, Ebenezer Bowsprit, of Exploits, was roaring the "Luck o' the Northern Light," a famous old sealing song, which, no doubt, his grandfather had sung to shipmates upon similar occasions long ago. Rough, frank faces, broadly smiling, were turned to him; and when it came time for the chorus, willing voices and mighty lungs swelled it to a volume that put the very gale to shame. The ship was pitching violently—with a nauseating roll occasionally thrown in—and the cabin was crowded and hot and filled with clouds of tobacco smoke; but neither pitch, nor roll, nor heat, nor smoke, could interfere with the jollity of the occasion.

"All right here," the captain growled, grinning in his great beard.

"Speech, Sir Archie!" shouted one of the men.

Before Archie could escape—and amid great laughter and uproar and louder calls for a speech—he was caught by the arm, jerked off his feet, and hoisted on the table, where he bumped his head, and, by an especially violent roll of the vessel, was almost thrown headlong into the arms of the grinning crowd around him.

"Speech, speech!" they roared.

Archie would have declined with some heat had he not caught sight of the face of Tim Tuttle—a tawny, lean, long man, apparently as strong as a wire rope. There was a steely twinkle in his eye, and a sneering, utterly contemptuous smile upon his thin lips. Archie did not know that this was Tuttle's habitual expression. He felt that the man expected a rather amusing failure on the part of Sir Archibald Armstrong's son; and that stimulated him to take the situation seriously. Unconsciously calling his good breeding to his aid, he pulled off his cap, smoothed his hair, touched his cravat, and—

"Ahem!" he began; as he had heard the governor of the colony do a dozen times, and as now, to his surprise, he found most inspiring.

"Hear, hear!" burst rapturously from old Ebenezer Bowsprit.

Ebenezer was in a condition of high delight and expectation. Admiration shone in his eyes, surprise was depicted by his wide opened mouth, bewonderment by his strained attention. The sight of his face was too much for Archie.

"Oh, what Tommy-rot!" he laughed. "Here, let me go! I can't (hold me up, or I'll fall) make a speech. ("Hear, hear!" from the awe-stricken Ebenezer.) All I got to say is that I'm (please get a better hold on my legs, or I'll be pitched off) mighty glad to be here. I'm having the best time of my life, and I expect to have a better one when we strike the seals. (Loud and prolonged cheering.) I hope——"

But, in the excitement following his last remark, the speaker's support was withdrawn, and a pitch of the ship threw him off the table. He was caught, set on his feet, and clapped on the back. Then he managed to escape with the captain, followed by loud cries of "More! More!" to which he felt justified in paying no attention.

"You're your father's son," laughed the captain, as they made their way up the deck. "Sure, your father never in his life let slip a chance t' make a speech."

In the forecastle they had a lad on the table under the lantern—a tow-headed, blue-eyed, muscular boy, of Archie's age, or less. He had on goatskin boots, a jacket of homespun, and a flaring red scarf. The men were quiet; for the boy was piping, in a clear, quavering treble, the "Song o' the Anchor an' Chain," a Ruddy Cove saga, which goes to the air of a plaintive West Country ballad of the seventeenth century, with the refrain,

He was near the end of the sixteenth verse, and the men were drawing breath for the chorus, when the captain appeared in the door, wrath in his eyes.

"What's this?" roared he.

There was no answer. The lad turned to face the captain, in part deferentially, in part humorously, altogether fearlessly.