"I am rejoiced that it turns out so, Captain Daggett," was Roswell's reply; "for to own the truth to you, the fortnight we have lost, or shall lose, before we get you stowed and ready to sail again, has made a great change in our weather. The days are shortening with frightful rapidity, and the great bay was actually covered with a skim of ice this very morning. The wind has sent in a sea that has broke it up; but look about you, in the cove here--a boy might walk on that ice near the rocks." "There'll be none of it left by night, and the two crews will fill me up in twenty-four hours. Keep a good heart Gar'ner; I'll take you clear of the bergs in the course of the week." "I have less fear of the bergs now, than of the new ice and the floes. The islands must have got pretty well to the northward by this time; but each night gets colder, and the fields seem to be setting back towards the group, instead of away from it." Daggett cheered his companion by a good deal of confident talk; but Roswell was heartily rejoiced when, at the end of four-and-twenty hours more, the Vineyard craft was pronounced entirely ready. It was near the close of the day, and Gardiner was for sailing, or moving at once; but Daggett offered several very reasonable objections. In the first place, there was no wind; and Roswell's proposition to tow the schooners out into the middle of the bay, was met by the objection that the people had been hard at work for several days, and that they needed some rest. All that could be gained by moving the schooners then, was to get them outside of the skim of ice that now regularly formed every still night near the land, but which was as regularly broken and dispersed by the waves, as soon as the wind returned. Roswell, however, did not like the appearances of things; and he determined to take his own craft outside, let Daggett do as he might. After discussing the matter in vain, therefore, and finding that the people of the other schooner had eaten their suppers and turned in, he called all hands, and made a short address to his own crew, leaving it to their discretion whether to man the boats or not. As Roswell had pointed out the perfect absence of wind, the smoothness of the water, and the appearances of a severe frost, or cold, for frost there was now, almost at mid-day, the men came reluctantly over to his view of the matter, and consented to work instead of sleeping. The toil, however, could be much lessened, by dividing the crew into the customary watches. All that Roswell aimed at was to get his schooner about a league from the cove, which would be taking her without a line drawn from cape to cape, the greatest danger of new ice being within the curvature of the crescent. This he thought might easily be done in the course of a few hours; and, should there come any wind, much sooner. On explaining this to the crew, the men were satisfied.