the gale was roaring past. The men crowded closer to hear him.

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"'Tis time to take to the ice," he cried.

Young John Nash was in the shelter of Saul's great body; he was touching the skirt of the man's coat like a 5 child in a crowd. He looked from the skipper's face and from the deck to the waste of pitching ice and to the cloudy wall of snow which shut it in. Then he laid hold of a fold in the coat, which he had but touched before, and crept a little closer.

IN THE ICE PACK-II

10

The schooner was low with her weight of seal fat. It was but a short leap to the pack in which she was caught -at most, but a swinging drop from the rail. That was all; even so, as the crew went over the side the shadow of the great terror fell fell as from a cloud approaching. 15 There was a rush to be clear of this doomed thing of wood, to be first in the way of escape, though the end of the untraveled path was a shadow; so there was a crowding at the rail, an outcry, a snarl, and the sound of a blow. The note of human frenzy was struck a 20 clangorous note, breaking harshly even into the mighty rage of things overhead and roundabout; and it clanged again, in a threat and a death cry, as the men gained footing on the pack and pushed out from the schooner in the wake of Saul Nash.

15

25

The ice was no more than a crust of fragments which the wind kept herded close, and it rose and fell with the long, low heave of the waves. Save upon a few scattered pans, which had resisted the grinding of the pack, there 5 was no place where a man could rest his foot; for where he set it down, there it sank. He must leap-leap-leap - from one sinking fragment to another, choosing in a flash where next to alight, or the pack would let him through and close over his head.

10

Moreover, the wind swept across the pack with full force and a stinging touch, and it was filled with the dust of snow; a wind which froze and choked and blinded where it could.

"We'll wait here," said Saul, between convulsive pants, 15 when with John and old Bill Anderson he had come to rest on a small pan. He turned his back to the wind to catch his breath. "We'll clear the shoal here," he added.

Then a hush fell upon the ice, a hush that deepened and spread, and soon left only the swish of the gale and 20 the muffled roar of the shoal. The driving force of the wind had somewhere been mysteriously counteracted. The pressure was withdrawn. The pack was free. It would swerve outward from the Blueblack Shoal.

25

"Back, men! She'll go clear of the shoal! That was the skipper. They could see him standing with his back to the gale and his hands to his mouth. Beyond, in the midst of snow, the schooner lay tossing.

The pack thinned and fell away into its fragments. The way back was vanishing, even the sinking way over which they had come.

It was then perceived that the schooner was drifting faster than the pack through which she was pushing. As 5 the ice fell away before her, her speed increased. The crew swerved to head her off. When Saul and John came to that one patch of loose ice where the rail was within reach, a crowd of seven was congested there, and with brute unreason they were fighting for the first grip.

The schooner was drifting faster. The loosened pack divided before her prows. She was scraping through the ice, leaving it behind her, faster and faster yet. The blind crowd amidships plunged along with her, all the while losing something of their position.

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Steady, John, boy!" said Saul. "Forward there, under the quarter!"

"Yes, Saul. Oh, make haste!

10

15

In a moment they were under the forward quarter, standing firm on a narrow pan of ice, waiting for the drift 20 of the schooner to bring the rail within reach. When that time came, Saul caught the lad in his arms and lifted him high. But even as John drew himself up, a hand was raised to catch his foot. Saul struck at the arm. Then the fight was upon him. A man clambered on his back. 25 He felt his foothold sinking, tipping, sinking. The rest trampled over them. Before they could recover and make

good their footing, the ship had drifted past. They were cut off from her by the open water in her wake. She slipped away like a shadow, vaguer grew, and vanished in the swirling snow. But Saul knew that John was 5 aboard and would come safe to Ragged Harbor. . . .

Saul gathered his strength to continue the fight, to meet the stress and terrors of the hours to come. Soon the seas came with new venom and might; they were charged with broken ice which added weight and terror to 10 the waves. They bruised and dazed and sorely hurt the

man when they fell upon him. No wave came but carried jagged chunks of ice, some great and some small. Saul shielded his head with his arms. He was struck on the legs and on the left side, and once he was struck on the 15 breast and knocked down. Again, after a time—it may

now have been three hours before midnight-other greater waves came. They broke over his head. They cast their weight of ice upon him. There seemed to be no end to their number. Once Saul, rising from where they had 20 beaten him, rising doggedly to face them again, found that his right arm was powerless. He tried to lift it, but could not. He felt a bone grate over a bone in his shoulder, and a stab of pain. So he shielded his head from the ice in the next wave with his left arm, and thus it went on 25 in diminishing degree for fifteen hours longer.

The folk of Neighborly Cove say that when the wind once more herded the pack and drove it inshore, Saul

Nash, being alone, made his way across four miles of loose ice to the home of Abraham Coachman, where they had corn meal for dinner; but Saul has forgotten all that befell him after the sea struck him on the shoulder, the things of the whirling night, of the lagging dawn, when 5 the snow thinned and ceased, and of the gray, frowning day, when the waves left him in peace. A crooked shoulder and a broad scar tell him that the fight was hard. But what matter? Notwithstanding all, when next the sea baited its traps with swarming herds, he set forth with 10 John, his brother, to the hunt; for the world which lies hidden in the wide beyond has some strange need of seal fat, and stands ready to pay, as of course. What matter — all this toil and peril - when the strength of a man provides so bounteously that his children may pass their 15 plates for more? What matter-in the end? Ease is a shame, and, for truth, old age holds nothing for any man save a seat in a corner and the sound of voices drifting in. Abridged from The Way of the Sea

floe: a low, flat mass of floating ice.

galley: the kitchen of a vessel.

— pack: a large area of floating ice driven more or less closely together. shrouds ropes which support the mast.

port: left, as opposed to starboard, right. - lunging: plunging, leaping. - clangorous (clănger ŭs): ringing. pans large blocks of floating ice. quarter: the side of a vessel between the middle portion and the stern. swarming herds: herds of seal which visit the Newfoundland and Labrador coast each year in great numbers. What matter, etc.: these reflections are those of the seal hunter, whose daily food depends upon his courage to meet such hardships.