Polaris glanced down the barred lane of the channel with heightened color. "I am no man of the seas," he answered quietly, "but I say, break through. For, look you, the wind rises again. Here all is held. Yonder in the open sea the bergs drive on. Where we break a pathway, no berg may follow us. When we are come through, the gale will have cleared the waters beyond, and we shall find our sailing smooth, ahead of the jam and behind the bergs that are gone before." "Aye, mon, mon, the boy is right," cut in MacKechnie. "This ship's not a plaything. Yon is varra hard cutting, but she can do it, dinna fear." Scoland turned to one of the mates. "Jameson, bring up the lyddite," he ordered. Where the floe fields seemed weakest and narrowest, near the left of the channel, the captain sent men onto the ice with drills and explosive, charge after charge of which was sunk into the floe and exploded from a battery in one of the cruiser's boats. Scoland took personal charge of the mining. Under his orders, his men blasted out a large basin in the floe, a hundred yards in from its face. "If we cut a channel straight in," he explained, "the pressure of the jam is likely to close it at once, or else shut it like a vise on the cruiser, after she is in. We will blast a narrow channel to the basin, drive the ship in, and then make another basin farther on, and a second channel. By zigzagging and letting the channels close in behind us, we will avoid the danger of being nipped and held fast in the floe." * * * * * Like a watchful sentinel, the _Minnetonka_ patrolled the edge of the floe, nosing small vagrant bergs from her way, in an endeavor to keep cleared the spot where she would have to make her dash for the channel. Scoland stood on the bridge, tapping its rail with a nervous hand, his sharp eyes darting from one to another of the larger ice masses which might be disposed to contest a passage with his ship. The men on the ice signaled that their lyddite train was laid and ready. They withdrew to a distance, one of them carrying the small battery, from which the slender connecting wires led to the sunken charges of explosive. Picking up her boat, the _Minnetonka_, under reversed engines, backed away and stood ready for the dash to the basin. Twice the captain raised his megaphone to his lips to give the word, but each time he hesitated. Suddenly he dropped it and sprang into the wheelhouse. Immediately the ship lunged forward. Keenly alive to these proceedings, Zenas Wright and Polaris, from their station near the forward davits, wondered at this new move. "Now what has happened?" questioned the scientist. "One would think we were going into battle. See, they are manning the guns!" Polaris glanced down the ship's rail and saw the eager-eyed gun crews tearing the coverings from their long-silent ordnance. Forth from their ports crept the grim muzzles of three of the _Minnetonka's_ six-inch guns.