“No, help us, help yourselves out of this fix.” Then, before Gedge could get a word of disclaimer over his lips: “I hear you are worrying about wages. But this isn’t a question of money. Lives are at stake. See that ice over yonder? And look here, I’ve got more on board this ship than any other one man. Fifteen thousand dollars is what the freight alone has cost me. But to save your life”—he took hold of Gedge’s arm—“to save _your_ life, every ounce of mine may go overboard, and I’ll help shift it at nothing an hour.” Gedge looked round rather sheepishly, as if he didn’t know the answer to this. But suddenly one occurred to him. “I’m from Missoura,” he said. “You got to show me. That other feller, too, the one that was givin’ me such a lot of hot air little while ago, why ain’t you an’ him—” “You come along with me. I’ll ‘show’ you.” O’Gorman carried the ringleader and Joslin down into the hold. Two hours later Hildegarde, peering over the edge of the square pit, saw among the group engaged in shoveling coal, Gedge, with the face of a blackamoor and the sweat pouring down. His surplus energy was at last being utilized. Three hundred and fifty tons were flung overboard before the tide was flood; and again at midnight the muddy water was set boiling, and the big yellow stack belched out clouds of smoke. The stranded ship moved a little, heavily, grudgingly, like a monster half awakened, and then settled down to finish a second night on the bar. The captain was not the only man who didn’t sleep. More than one “sort o’ watchman” showed signs of strain the next morning. For the fog was thicker than the day before, the wind veering and no assurance how far away the ice. It was partly the fever of anxiety that found vent in sneers, hardly to be called covert, when it was known the captain meant to take steps to free the ship that afternoon. “That glass-eyed idiot don’t even yet know there ain’t but one tide in this part of the world, and that one’s near midnight!” was the discarded pilot’s contribution. That Gillies was prepared for the eccentricities of northern tides was credited by few. Open jeers followed his putting off in a small boat, with the second officer, to sound for deep water. “What’s the good of deeper water a hundred yards from the ship?” The possible good appeared upon the captain’s return. The anchor that the small boat was to carry back (with buoys to mark the place selected) looked big enough to landsmen’s eyes, till they saw the lowering of the one to be lashed underneath the long boat. This mighty two-and-a-half-ton iron-grappler, so the rumor ran, was to be used to “kedge” the steamer off the bar. But where were the sailors coming from to man a boat of this size, let alone to carry out successfully so ticklish an affair? “It’s all right,” Cheviot had said.