And so we started; the leader being old Bill, who to some end, that I could not then divine, bore a boat-sail bundled on his back.  Our first business was to make way to our surf or life boat.  This lay about three miles from the village, reckoning as the crow flies, and was sheltered under a rude house which stood on the shores of a bay opening by an inlet into the sea.  Our common way of gaining this house was through a circuitous passage of the sounds; but these we soon discovered, in consonance with a previous prediction of old Bill’s, were entirely frozen over save in certain parts of their channels; and hence, this route being unnavigable for such boats as were at hand, which, without exception, were light gunning and fishing skiffs, we were forced to avail ourselves of a barely practicable land track of which we knew, and which, as it led about among the marshes, was also circuitous.  And the necessity of choosing this land path added to our difficulties, in that we were forced to provide ourselves with a small batteau and drag it behind us, to be able to cross many ditches and sloughs with which it was barred, and which, particularly along their edges, were never really frozen.  After toiling and battling for a long period, and at the same time having to face the most painfully cutting wind that burst unobstructedly over the level area of the marshes, we at last reached the house wherein the life-boat lay, and when old Bill had scrutinized its oars, and stored it with a mingled collection of cordage, canvas and spars, we ran it into the water.  But now another trouble arose.  The bay, like the sounds of which indeed it formed a part, was covered with ice,—­either in solid sheets, or that thick slush, peculiar to ocean estuaries, which is chiefly known as ’porridge ice,’—­and, from its comparative shallowness, covered so densely, too, that if we had trusted to getting our boat out of it by sheer rowing, it would have taken us the entire day so to do.  In this emergency nothing would serve but that we must advance bodily into the water, and, crushing and clearing away the ice with our feet, drag the boat, in a depth at least sufficient for her to float, to the entrance of the inlet, where the current ran so strongly that no ice could gather.  After a severely trying amount of labor, this point was finally gained, and we stood fairly in front of the tall, thundering breakers; whereupon each man nimbly jumped to his place in the craft, that of steersman being the post of old Bill.

As we gave way on our oars, we shot along the inlet without much difficulty; and presently old Bill announced that, he caught a faint sight of the wreck in the distance—­to all appearance ’most all gone but the hull.’  But we had little or no opportunity to indulge in speculation or remark on the discovery, for in a moment or two we began to oppose the wildness of the open main, and the hour of our real trial set in.  For the first time we could now appreciate the full force of the gale.