In October, when the long twilight which precedes the polar night, had already set in, there came a fierce gale, accompanied by a tossing, roaring sea.  The pack, racked by the surges, which now raised it with a mighty force, and then rolling on, left it to fall unsupported, began to go to pieces.  The whistling wind accelerated its destruction, driving the floes far apart, heaping them up against the hull of the ship until the grinding and the prodigious pressure opened her seams and the water rushed in.  The cry that the ship was sinking rung along the decks, and all hands turned with desperate energy to throwing out on the ice-floe to windward, sledges, provisions, arms, records—­everything that could be saved against the sinking of the ship, which all thought was at hand.  Nineteen of the ship’s company were landed on the floe to carry the material away from its edge to a place of comparative safety.  The peril seemed so imminent that the men in their panic performed prodigious feats of strength—­lifting and handling alone huge boxes, which at ordinary times, would stagger two men.  A driving, whirling snowstorm added to the gloom, confusion, and terror of the scene, shutting out almost completely those on the ice from the view of those still on the ship.  In the midst of the work the cry was raised that the floes were parting, and with incredible rapidity the ice broke away from the ship on every side, so that communication between those on deck and those on the floe was instantly cut off by a broad interval of black and tossing water, while the dark and snow-laden air cut off vision on every side.  The cries of those on the ice mingled with those from the fast vanishing ship, for each party thought itself in the more desperate case.  The ice was fast going to pieces, and boats were plying in the lanes of water thus opened, picking up those clinging to smaller cakes of ice and transporting them to the main floe.  On the ship the captain’s call had summoned all hands to muster, and they gazed on each other in dumb despair as they saw how few of the ship’s company remained.  All were sent to the pumps, for the water in the hold was rising with ominous rapidity.  The cry rang out that the steam-pumps must be started if the ship was to be saved, but long months had passed since any fire had blazed under those boilers, and to get up steam was a work of hours.  With tar-soaked oakum and with dripping whale blubber the engineer strove to get the fires roaring, the while the men on deck toiled with desperate energy at the hand-pumps.  But the water gained on them.  The ship sunk lower and lower in the black ocean, until a glance over the side could tell all too plainly that she was going to her fate.  Now the water begins to ooze through the cracks in the engine-room floor, and break in gentle ripples about the feet of the firemen.  If it rises much higher it will flood the fire-boxes, and then all will be over, for there is not one boat left on the ship—­all were landed on the now invisible floe.  But just as all hope was lost there came a faint hissing of steam, the pumps began slowly moving, and then settled down into their monotonous “chug-chug,” the sweetest sound, that day, those desperate mariners had ever heard.  They were saved by the narrowest of chances.