"It is possible that your seams opened under the nip, and have closed again, as soon as the schooner got free. In such a case, ten minutes at the pump will let us know it." Although there is no duty to which seamen are so averse as pumping--none, perhaps, that is actually so exhausting and laborious--it often happens that they have recourse to it with eagerness, as the only available means of saving their lives. Such was now the case, the harsh but familiar strokes of the pump-break being audible amid the more solemn and grand sounds of the grating of ice-bergs, the rushing of floes, and the occasional scuffling and howling of the winds. The last appeared to have changed in their direction, however; a circumstance that was soon noted, there being much less of biting cold in the blasts than had been felt in the earlier hours of the night. "I do believe that the wind has got round here to the north-east," said Roswell, as he paced the quarter-deck with Daggett, still holding in his hand the well wiped and dried sounding-rod, in readiness for another trial. "That last puff was right in our teeth!" "Not in our teeth, Gar'ner; no, not in _my_ teeth," answered Daggett, "whatever it maybe in _your'n_. I shall try to get back to the island, where I shall endeavour to beach the schooner, and get a look at her leaks. This is the _most_ I can hope for. It would never do to think of carrying a craft, after such a nip, as far as Rio, pumping every foot of the way!" "That will cause a great delay, Captain Daggett," said Roswell, doubtingly. "We are now well in among the first great body of the ice; it may be as easy to work our way to the northward of it, as to get back into clear water to the southward." "I dare say it would; but, back I go. I do not ask you to accompany us, Gar'ner; by no means. A'ter the handsome manner in which you've waited for us so long, I couldn't think of such a thing! If the wind has r'ally got round to nothe-east, and I begin to think it has, I shall get the schooner into the cove in four-and-twenty hours; and there's as pretty a spot to beach her, just under the shelf where we kept our spare casks, as a body can wish. In a fortnight we'll have her leaks all stopped, and be jogging along in your wake. You'll tell the folks on Oyster Pond that we're a-coming, and they'll be sure to send the news across to the Vineyard." This was touching Roswell on a point of honour, and Daggett knew it very well. Generous and determined, the young man was much more easily influenced by a silent and indirect appeal to his liberal qualities, than he could possibly have been by any other consideration. The idea of deserting a companion in distress, in a sea like that in which he was, caused him to shrink from what, under other circumstances, he would regard as an imperative duty. The deacon, and still more, Mary, called him north; but the necessities of the Vineyarders would seem to chain him to their fate.