“My opeenion is,” remarked Saunders, who passed at the moment with two large bags of gunpowder under his arms, “that it’ll have no effect at a’.  It’ll just loosen the ice roond the ship.”

The captain smiled as he said, “That is all the effect I hope for, Mr. Saunders.  Should the outward ice give way soon, we shall then be in a better position to avail ourselves of it.”

As Saunders predicted, the effect of powder and saws was merely to loosen and rend the ice-tables in which the Dolphin was imbedded; but deliverance was coming sooner than any of those on board expected.  That night a storm arose, which, for intensity of violence, equalled, if it did not surpass, the severest gales they had yet experienced.  It set the great bergs of the Polar Seas in motion, and these moving mountains of ice slowly and majestically began their voyage to southern climes, crashing through the floes, overturning the hummocks, and ripping up the ice-tables with quiet but irresistible momentum.  For two days the war of ice continued to rage, and sometimes the contending forces, in the shape of huge tongues and corners of bergs, were forced into the Bay of Mercy, and threatened swift destruction to the little craft, which was a mere atom that might have been crushed and sunk and scarcely missed in such a wild scene.

At one time a table of ice was forced out of the water and reared up, like a sloping wall of glass, close to the stern of the Dolphin, where all the crew were assembled with ice-poles ready to do their utmost; but their feeble efforts could have availed them nothing had the slowly-moving mass continued its onward progress.

“Lower away the quarter-boat,” cried the captain, as the sheet of ice six feet thick came grinding down towards the starboard quarter.

Buzzby, Grim, and several others sprang to obey, but before they could let go the fall-tackles, the mass of ice rose suddenly high above the deck, over which it projected several feet, and caught the boat.  In another moment the timbers yielded, the thwarts sprang out or were broken across, and slowly, yet forcibly, as a strong hand might crush an egg-shell, the boat was squeezed flat against the ship’s side.

“Shove, lads! if it comes on we’re lost,” cried the captain, seizing one of the long poles with which the men were vainly straining every nerve and muscle.  They might as well have tried to arrest the progress of a berg.  On it came, and crushed in the starboard quarter bulwarks.  Providentially at that moment it grounded and remained fast; but the projecting point that overhung them broke off and fell on the deck with a crash that shook the good ship from stem to stern.  Several of the men were thrown violently down, but none were seriously hurt in this catastrophe.