The last suggestion struck Roswell as possible.  From the instant he felt certain that he was called on for aid, he had determined to proceed to the wreck, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, and the intense severity of the weather.  As he had intimated to Stephen, he was not at all conscious how very cold it was; exercise and the active workings of his mind having brought him to an excellent condition to resist the sternness of the season.  The appeal had been so sudden and unexpected, however, that he was at first somewhat at a loss how to proceed.  This matter was now discussed between him and Stimson, when the following plan was adopted:—­

The mates were to be called, and made acquainted with what had occurred, and put on their guard as to what might possibly be required of them.  It was not thought necessary to call any of the rest of the men.  There was always one hand on the watch in the house, whose duty it was to look to the fires, for the double purpose of security against a conflagration, and to prevent the warmth within from sinking too near to the cold without.  It had often occurred to Roswell’s mind that a conflagration would prove quick destruction to his party.  In the first place, most of the provisions would be lost; and it was certain that, without a covering and the means of keeping warm within it, the men could not resist the climate eight-and-forty hours.  The burning of the hut would be certain death.

Roswell took no one with him but Stimson.  Two were as good as a hundred, if all that was asked were merely the means to re-light the fire.  These means were provided, and a loaded pistol was taken also, to enable a signal-shot to be fired, should circumstances seem to require further aid.  One or two modes of communicating leading facts were concerted, when our hero and his companion set forth on their momentous journey.

Taking the hour, the weather, and the object before him into the account, Roswell Gardiner felt that he was now enlisted in the most important undertaking of his whole life, as he and Stephen shook hands with the two mates, and left the point.  The drifts rendered a somewhat circuitous path necessary at first; but the moon and stars shed so much of their radiance on the frozen covering of the earth, that the night was quite as light as many a London day.  Excitement and motion kept the blood of our two adventurers in a brisk circulation, and prevented their becoming immediately conscious of the chill intensity of the cold to which they were exposed.

“It is good to think of Almighty.  God, and of his many marcies,” said Stephen, when a short distance from the house, “as a body goes forth on an expedition as serious as this.  We may not live to reach the wrack, for it seems to me to grow colder and colder!”

“I wonder we hear no more of the cries,” remarked Roswell, who was thinking of the distress he was bent on relieving.  “One would think that a man who could call so stoutly would give us another cry.”