This, then, was the region that Roswell Gardiner was so very anxious to leave; the winter he so much dreaded. Mary Pratt was before him, to say nothing of his duty to the deacon; while behind him was the vast polar ocean just described, about to be veiled in the freezing obscurity of its long and gloomy twilight, if not of absolute night. No wonder, therefore, that when he trimmed his sails that evening, to beat out of the great bay, that it was done with the earnestness with which we all perform duties of the highest import, when they are known to affect our well-being, visibly and directly. "Keep her a good full, Mr. Hazard," said Roswell, as he was leaving the deck, to take the first sleep in which he had indulged for four-and-twenty hours; "and let her go through the water. We are behind our time, and must keep in motion. Give me a call if anything like ice appears in a serious way." Hazard "ay-ay'd" this order, as usual, buttoned his pee-jacket tighter than ever, and saw his young superior--the transcendental delicacy of the day is causing the difference in rank to be termed "_senior_ and _junior_"--but Hazard saw _his_ superior go below, with a feeling allied to envy, so heavy were his eye-lids with the want of rest. Stimson was in the first-mate's watch, and the latter approached that old sea-dog with a wish to keep himself awake by conversing. "You seem as wide awake, king Stephen," the mate remarked, "as if you never felt drowsy!" "This is not a part of the world for hammocks and berths, Mr. Hazard," was the reply. "I can get along, and must get along, with a quarter part of the sleep in these seas as would sarve me in a low latitude." "And I feel as if I wanted all I can get. Them fellows look up well into our wake, Stephen." "They do indeed, sir, and they ought to do it; for we have been longer than is for our good, in their'n." "Well, now we have got a fresh start, I hope we may make a clear run of it. I saw no ice worth speaking of, to the nor'ard here, before we made sail." "Because you see'd none, Mr. Hazard; is no proof there is none. Floe-ice can't be seen at any great distance though its blink may. But, it seems to me, it's all blink in these here seas!" "There you're quite right, Stephen; for turn which way you will, the horizon has a show of that sort----" "Starboard"--called out the look-out forward--"keep her away--keep her away--there is ice ahead." "Ice in here!" exclaimed Hazard, springing forward--"That is more than we bargained for! Where away is your ice, Smith?" "Off here, sir, on our weather bow--and a mortal big field of it--jist sich a chap as nipp'd the Vineyard Lion, when she first came in to join us. Sich a fellow as that would take the sap out of our bends, as a squeezer takes the juice from a lemon!"