That afternoon it began to look bad for the bark and the men aboard her. It was her captain, refreshed from a twenty-four hours’ sleep below, who thoughtlessly passed his opinion when he, the first of his crew to revive, poked his head above the companion-way and was astonished by the sight of the ship that he thought he had scuttled. “What--she on top of the water yet!” From the bark his eyes roved to the derailed ice-covered deck of the little _Buccaneer_, then up to Sam and his toiling gang again. “Well, they are damn fools, ain’t they, to think they’ll ever get her home?” He said that to Crump, who answered softly: “Now, Captain, I don’t want to jar your feelings any, but if you don’t do one of two things--go below and stay there, or draw the hatch over your face if you stay up here--then I’m afeared I’ll have to pick you up and tuck you away under the run or somewhere else where you can’t be heard for a while. Damn fools, eh?” snorted Crump, and in sheer derision of some people’s judgment spat several fathoms to leeward. It turned out as Crump had predicted in the morning--still heavier weather for that afternoon and night. Just when Sam was demonstrating with a long pole that there was at least a foot less water in her hold, the wind and sea began to make. Crump offered to attempt to put fresh men aboard, but Sam waved him off. “No use, Skipper, runnin’ extra risk for the gang--you’d lose some of ’em. We’ll stick it out--we’ll make out some way.” Throughout that night the men on the bark toiled terribly. Chop ice and man pumps it was, with not even time to crack a joke or indulge in occasional cheering reminiscence. There was not time during most of the night even to carry to the rail and throw to leeward the chopped ice. So they cut it into large blocks and piled them up two or three tiers high and there allowed them to stay until by and by, the bark heaving down sufficiently, away they went in a grand slide overboard. “Everybody sashay,” Sam would cry then, and waft them overboard with graceful arms. And yet, exhausting as was the ice-chopping, the pumping was even more so. It was so terribly monotonous to men accustomed to lively action. No variety to pumping water out of a ship’s hold; never a chance to put in a fancy stroke or shift hands, as in ice-chopping. Up and down--always that--up and down; and when a ship is making as fast as she is lightened, never an inch of encouragement from the sounding pole. Sam had to cut down the spells from an hour to half an hour, and finally to fifteen minutes, so terribly wearing did the grind become to the exhausted men. Sam himself had no exuberant vitality after that second night; but the unobtrusive will was inflexible as ever, and he had ever an eye for those on the _Buccaneer_. “Skipper, ain’t she been strainin’ through the night?” “A little bit, Sammie, a little bit.”