All the next day the gale raged with fury, the ice was a foot thick on deck, and the ropes and rigging were masses of ice. It was impossible to work ship or make sail and we let her lie and drift to the southward. The day succeeding, the gale moderated and the thermometer suddenly started up. Trying the temperature of the water alongside, we found ourselves in the Gulf Stream. All that day we were employed drawing up the warm water from alongside, pouring it over the rigging and beating off the ice. At night we got it sufficiently cleared to allow us to make sail. Fine weather succeeded and in a few days we found ourselves on George's Bank. The captain hailed the fishing schooner, "Eliza A. Proctor," to find out our position, as he was somewhat distrustful of the accuracy of his chronometer. "Schooner ahoy!" "Halloa," answered a shrill voice. "What is your longitude?" "We hai'n't got no longitude; we're after fish!" "How does George's Shoal bear?" "Nor' West by North." As we passed the schooner Capt. Streeter discovered that the skipper was his mate of two voyages previous--Mr. Foster, whom he had quarrelled with and discharged from the ship in Mobile. The bearing he gave did not at all agree with the reckoning; the captain had some misgivings as to the skipper's information and decided not to trust to it. The schooner "Emporia" afterwards gave us another bearing and when we sighted Cape Cod we found Foster had deceived us, and given a course that would have wrecked the ship if it had been followed. He evidently did it out of spite to his old commander. Capt. Streeter was weather-wise, and continually prophesied the changes of the wind. Once when it had been blowing from the north-west for two or three days, it began to moderate and give evidence that this wind had had its day. The captain said in the evening: "This wind is about done now, it will haul around to the eastward, going by the north, or it may die away calm and haul around by the south." At four in the morning I called him and told him there was an easterly breeze. "Which way did it haul?" "By the north, sir." "Didn't I tell you so?" said the captain. The evening we made Cape Cod, the sky began to clear in the westward and a light breeze came from that direction. "Now," said the captain, "we are in for it. It's just my luck. It's going to blow a living gale of wind from the nor'west; we shall be driven off the coast and not fetch back here for a fortnight." This was rather disheartening and I couldn't help replying: "If I thought so I wouldn't say it, for I think we have had quite trouble enough without borrowing any." "I tell you what it is young man," said the captain, "there's a difference between borrowing trouble and being weather-wise."