When Roswell Gardiner came on deck next morning, his first glance told him how little was the chance of his party's returning north that season. The strange floe had driven into the Great Bay, completely covering its surface, lining the shores far and near with broken and glittering cakes of ice; and, as it were, hermetically sealing the place against all egress. New ice, an inch or two thick, or even six or eight inches thick, might have been sawed through; and a passage cut even for a league, should it be necessary. Such things were sometimes done, and great as would have been the toil, our sealers would have attempted it, in preference to running the risk of passing a winter in that region. But almost desperate as would have been even that source of refuge, the party was completely cut off from its possession. To think of sawing through ice as thick as that of the floe, for any material distance, would be like a project to tunnel the Alps. Melancholy was the meeting between Roswell and Daggett that morning. The former was too manly and generous to indulge in reproaches, else might he well have told the last that all this was owing to him. There is a singular propensity in us all to throw the burthen of our own blunders on the shoulders of other folk. Roswell had a little of this weakness, overlooking the fact that he was his own master; and as he had come to the group by himself, he ought to have left it in the same manner, as soon as his own particular task was accomplished. But Roswell did not see this quite as distinctly as he saw the fact that Daggett's detentions and indirect appeals to his better feelings had involved him in all these difficulties. Still, while thus he felt, he made no complaint. All hope of getting north that season now depended on the field-ice's drifting away from the Great Bay before it got fairly frozen in. So jammed and crammed with it did every part of the bay appear to be, however, that little could be expected from that source of relief. This Daggett admitted in the conversation he held with Roswell, as soon as the latter joined him on the rocky terrace beneath the house. "The wisest thing we can do, then," replied our hero, "will be to make as early preparations as possible to meet the winter. If we are to remain here, a day gained now will be worth a week a month hence. If we should happily escape, the labour thus expended will not kill us." "Quite true--very much as you say, certainly," answered Daggett, musing. "I was thinking as you came ashore, Gar'ner, if a lucky turn might not be made in this wise:--have a good many skins in the wreck, you see, and you have a good deal of ile in your hold--now, by starting some of that ile, and pumping it out, and shooking the casks, room might be made aboard of you for all my skins. I think we could run all of the last over on them wheels in the course of a week." "Captain Daggett, it is by yielding so much to your skins that we have got into all this trouble."