It was at this moment that Mildmay caught a momentary glimpse of an object far away on the northern horizon, which his practised eye at once told him was a sail of some sort. He instantly seized one of the telescopes suspended in the pilot-house, and brought the instrument to bear in her direction. For nearly a minute he was unsuccessful in his endeavour to find her; but at length she reappeared from behind an intervening berg; and it appeared to him that she was in a situation of considerable peril. She was a barque, under close-reefed topsails, reefed courses, fore topmast staysail, and mizzen; and she appeared to be embayed in the bight of a huge floe, with a whole fleet of bergs in dangerous proximity and apparently bearing down upon her. Perhaps the strangest peculiarity about her was that, notwithstanding her perilous position, she was dressed with flags, from her mast-heads downward, as though it were a gala day on board. Mildmay's anxious attitude and expression of face, together with his earnest devotion to his telescope, soon attracted the notice of the rest of the party; and the baronet asked him what object it was that so riveted his attention. He withdrew his eyes for a moment from the instrument, and, pointing out the small and scarcely distinguishable dark spot on the horizon, said: "Do you see that object, gentlemen? Well, that is a barque embayed in the ice, and evidently making a supreme effort to free herself--an effort which to me, and at this distance, appears quite hopeless. It is my opinion that, unless the wind changes, or something equally unforeseen occurs, she will within the next half hour be smashed into matchwood--unless, indeed, _we_ can help her." "Help her? Of course we can," said the professor; and without waiting for further discussion, he laid his hand on the engine lever and sent the machinery ahead at nearly half-speed. The _Flying Fish_ darted forward like a swallow in full flight; and the professor, leaving the baronet in charge of the engines and the steering-gear, summoned Mildmay and the colonel to follow him. The trio hastened to the after part of the deck, and, raising a trap-door which the professor indicated, withdrew therefrom a thin pliant wire hawser-- made, like almost everything else in the ship, of aethereum--which, having secured one end of it to a ring-bolt in the after extremity of the deck, they coiled down in readiness for use as a tow-line. "There!" ejaculated the professor in a gratified tone of voice, "we will give her the end of that rope; and it shall go hard with us, but we will tow her into some place of at least temporary safety." "That is all right," responded Mildmay; "but how are we going to get it on board her? Its weight is a mere nothing, it is true, but it is rather too bulky to heave on board. Have you nothing smaller that we can bend on to the eye of the hawser and use as a heaving-line?"