"Call the watch, Mr. Ackell!" he cried, sharply. "We'll wait no longer."

He ran to the bridge, signalled "Stand by!" to the engine-room, and ordered the firing of the recall gun. The men of the last party were within ear of the report. It brought all work on the ice to a close. The men waited only to pile the dead seals in heaps and mark possession with flags.

"Again, mate!" shouted the captain. "They're long about comin', it seems t' me."

A second discharge brought the men on a run to the edge of the ice. It was evident that some danger threatened. They ran at full speed, crowded aboard the waiting boats, and were embarked as quickly as might be. Then the ship steamed off to the second field, five miles distant, to pick up the second party. When she came within hearing distance, three signal guns were fired, with the result that, when she came to, the men were waiting for the boats.

It was a run of six miles to the field upon which the first party had been landed—part of the way in and out among the pans. The storm had now taken form and was advancing swiftly, and the fields in the northeast were hidden in a spreading darkness. The wind had risen to half a gale, and it was beginning to snow. A run of six miles! The captain's heart sank. When he looked at the black clouds rising from behind the coast, he doubted that the Dictator could do it in time. An appalling fortune seemed to be descending on the men on the ice.

"But we may make it, mate," said the captain, "if——"

"Ay, sir?"

"If they's no ice comin' with the gale."

The ship had been riding the open sea, skirting the floe. Now she came to the mouth of a broad lane, which wound through the fields. It was the course; along that lane, at all hazards, she must thread her way. The danger was extreme. The wind, blowing a gale, might force the great fields together. Or, if ice came with the wind, the lanes might be choked up. In either event, what chance would there be for the men? In the first event, which was almost inevitable, what chance would there be for the Dictator herself?

"Cap'n Hand, sir," the mate began, nervously, "is you goin'——"

The captain looked up in amazement when the mate stammered and stopped. "Well, sir?" he said.

"Is you goin' inside the ice, sir?"

"Is I goin' WHAT?" roared the captain, turning upon him. "Is I goin' WHAT, sir?"

It was sufficient. The captain was going among the fields. The mate needed no plainer answer to his question.

"Beg pardon, sir," he muttered meekly. "I thought you was."

"Huh!" growled the captain.

When the ship passed into the lane, the storm burst overhead. The scunner in the foretop was near blinded by the driven snow. His voice was swept hither and thither by the wind. Directions came to the bridge in broken sentences. The captain dared not longer drive the vessel at full speed.

"Half speed!" he signalled.

The ship crept along. For half an hour, while the night drew on, not a word was spoken, save the captain's quiet "Port!" and "Starboard!" into the wheelhouse tube. Then the mate heard the old man mutter:

"Poor b'y! Poor Sir Archibald!"

No other reference was made to the boy. In the captain's mind, thereafter, for all the mate knew, young Archibald Armstrong, the owner's son, was merely one of a crew of sixty men, lost on the floe.

"Ice ahead!" screamed the lookout in the bow.

The ship was brought to a stop. The lane she had been following had closed before her. The mate went forward.

"Heavy ice, sir," he reported.

Broken ice, then, had come down with the wind. It had been carried into the channels, choking them.

"Does you see water beyond, b'y?" the captain shouted.

"'Tis too thick t' tell, sir."

The captain signalled "Go ahead!" The chance must be taken. To be caught between two fields in a great storm was a fearful situation. So the ship pushed into the ice, moving at a snail's pace, labouring hard, and complaining of the pressure upon her ribs. Soon she made no progress whatever. The screw was turning noisily; the vessel throbbed with the labour of the engines; but she was at a standstill.

"Stuck, sir!" exclaimed the mate.

"Ay, mate," the captain said, blankly, "stuck."

The ship struggled bravely to force her way on; but the ice, wedged all about her, was too heavy.

"God help the men!" said the captain, as he signalled for the stopping of the engines. "We're stuck!"

"An' God help us," the mate added, in the same spirit, "if the fields come together!"

Conceive the situation of the Dictator. She lay between two of many vast, shifting fields, all of immeasurable mass. The captain had deliberately subjected her to the chances in an effort to rescue the men for whom he was accountable to the women and children of Green Bay. She was caught; and if the wind should drive the fields together, her case would be desperate, indeed. The slow, mighty pressure exerted by such masses is irresistible. The ship would either be crushed to splinters, or—a slender chance—she would be lifted out of danger for the time.

Had there been no broken ice about her, destruction would have been inevitable. Her hope now lay in that ice; for, with the narrowing of the space in which it floated, it would in part be forced deep into the water, and in part be crowded out of it. If it should get under the ship's bottom, it would exert an increasing upward pressure; and that pressure might be strong enough to lift the vessel clear of the fields. The captain had known of such cases; but now he smiled when he called them to mind.

"Take a week's rations an' four boats t' the ice, mate," he directed, "an' be quick about it. We'll sure have t' leave the ship."

While the mate went about this work, the captain paced the bridge, regardless of the cold and storm. It was dark, the wind was bitter and strong, the snow was driving past; but still he paced the bridge, now and then turning towards the darkness of that place, far off on the floe, where his men, and the young charge he had been given, were lost. The women of Green Bay would not forgive him for lives lost thus; of that he was sure. And the lad—that tender lad——

"Poor little b'y!" he thought. "Poor Sir Archibald!"

For relief from this torturing thought, he went among the men. He found most of them gathered in groups, gravely discussing the situation of the ship. In the forecastle, some were holding a "prayer-meeting"; the skipper paused to listen to the singing and to the solemn words that followed it. Here and there, as he went along, he spoke an encouraging word; here and there dropped a word of advice, as, "Timothy, b'y, you got too much on your back; 'tis not wise t' load yourself down when you takes t' the ice," and the like; here and there, in a smile or a glance, he found the comforting assurance that the men knew he had tried to do his duty.

"Cap'n John Hand," he thought, when he returned to the bridge, "you hasn't got a coward aboard!"

The mate came up to report. "We've the boats on the ice, sir," he said, "an' I've warned the crew t' make ready."

"Very well, Mr. Ackell; they's nothin' more t' be done."

"Hark, sir!"

The ice about the ship seemed to be stirring. Beyond—from far off in the distance to windward—the noise of grinding, breaking ice-pans could be heard. There was no mistaking the warning. The moment of peril was at hand.

"The fields is comin' together, sir."

"Call the crew, Mr. Ackell," said the captain, quietly.

The men gathered on deck. They were silent while they waited. The only sounds came from the ice—and from overhead, where the wind was screaming through the rigging.

"'Tis comin', sir," said the mate.

"Ay."

"God help us!"

"'Twill soon be over, Mr. Ackell," observed the captain.

He awaited the event with a calm spirit.