But there was no time to think of or regret this, for the ship was now driving down with the gale, scraping against a lee of ice which was seldom less than thirty feet thick.  Almost at the same moment the strange vessel was whirled close to them, not more than fifty yards distant, between two driving masses of thick ice.

“What if it should be my father’s brig?” whispered Fred Ellice, as he grasped Singleton’s arm and turned to him a face of ashy paleness.

“No fear of that, lad,” said Buzzby, who stood near the larboard gangway and had overheard the remark.  “I’d know your father’s brig among a thousand—­”

As he spoke, the two masses of ice closed, and the brig was nipped between them.  For a few seconds she seemed to tremble like a living creature, and every timber creaked.  Then she was turned slowly on one side, until the crew of the Dolphin could see down into her hold, where the beams were giving way and cracking up as matches might be crushed in the grasp of a strong hand.  Then the larboard bow was observed to yield as if it were made of soft clay, the starboard bow was pressed out, and the ice was forced into the forecastle.  Scarcely three minutes had passed since the nip commenced; in one minute more the brig went down, and the ice was rolling wildly, as if in triumph, over the spot where she had disappeared.

The fate of this vessel, which might so soon be their own, threw a momentary gloom over the crew of the Dolphin, but their position left them no time for thought.  One upturned mass rose above the gunwale, smashed in the bulwarks, and deposited half a ton of ice on deck.  Scarcely had this danger passed when a new enemy appeared in sight ahead.  Directly in their way, just beyond the line of floe-ice against which they were alternately thumping and grinding, lay a group of bergs.  There was no possibility of avoiding them, and the only question was, whether they were to be dashed to pieces on their hard blue sides, or, perchance, in some providential nook to find a refuge from the storm.

“There’s an open lead between them and the floe-ice,” exclaimed Bolton in a hopeful tone of voice, seizing an ice-pole and leaping on the gunwale.

“Look alive, men, with your poles,” cried the captain, “and shove with a will!”

The “Ay, ay, sir,” of the men was uttered with a heartiness that showed how powerfully this gleam of hope acted on their spirits; but a new damp was cast over them when, on gaining the open passage, they discovered that the bergs were not at rest, but were bearing down on the floe-ice with slow but awful momentum, and threatening to crush the ship between the two.  Just then a low berg came driving up from the southward, dashing the spray over its sides, and with its forehead ploughing up the smaller ice as if in scorn.  A happy thought flashed across the captain’s mind.

“Down the quarter boat,” he cried.

In an instant it struck the water, and four men were on the thwarts.