“’Tis the ice,” he said.  “I do believe the pressure has caused the fields to part on the rocks of that island.  If so, our leeward floe may float away, as fast as the weather field approaches.”

“Hardly,” said Roswell, gazing intently towards the nearest island; “hardly; for the most weatherly of the two will necessarily get the force of the wind and the impetus of those bergs first, and make the fastest drift.  It may lessen the violence of the nip, but I do not think it will avert it altogether.”

This opinion of Gardiner’s fully described all that subsequently occurred.  The outer floe continued its inroads on the inner, breaking up the margins of both, until the channel was so nearly closed as to bring the field from which the danger was most apprehended in absolute contact with the side of the schooner.  When the margin of the outer floe first touched the bilge of the schooner, it was at the precise spot where the vessel had just been fortified within.  Fenders had also been provided without, and there was just a quarter of a minute, during which the two captains hoped that these united means of defence might enable the craft to withstand the pressure.  This delusion lasted but a moment, however, the cracking of timbers letting it be plainly seen that the force was too great to be resisted.  For another quarter of a minute, the two masters held their breath, expecting to see the deck rise beneath their feet, as the ice rose along the points of contact between the floes.  Such, in all probability, would have been the result, had not the pressure brought about another change, that was quite as much within the influence of the laws of mechanical forces, though not so much expected.  Owing to the wedge-like form of the vessel’s bottom, as well as to the circumstance that the ice of the outer floe had a similar shape, projecting beneath the schooner’s keel, the craft was lifted bodily, with an upward jerk, as if she were suddenly released from some imprisoning power.  Released she was, indeed, and that most opportunely, for another half-minute would have seen her ribs broken in, and the schooner a mangled wreck.  As she now rose, Roswell gave vent to his delight in a loud cry, and all hands felt that the occurrence might possibly save them.  The surge upward was fearful, and several of the men were thrown off their feet; but it effectually released the schooner from the nip, laying her gradually up in the sort of dock that her people had been so many hours preparing for her reception.  There she lay, inclining a little, partly on her bilge, or sewed, as seamen term it, when a vessel gets a list from touching the ground and being left by the tide, neither quite upright, nor absolutely on her beam-ends.