“We can dispense with poetry, which has a suspiciously Biblical sound,” said Frontin drily. “Thank heaven I am no Irishman, to make misfortunes into poetry! Instead, I make them into a ladder.” Sir Phelim laughed. “Poet yourself, dark man! Well, why all this talk of omens and the star that we follow?” “Because I propose to follow it now.” For an instant Burke did not get the full import of these words, until something in the tone, in the glinting dark eyes, of Frontin gave him enlightenment. Then he started. “Impossible! That were rank madness----” Frontin lifted his hand, made an imperturbable gesture. “Listen! Listen!” The trembling grind of the crushing floes and bergs had never ceased. As he listened, however, Sir Phelim gradually detected a new and different sound--a strange sound that blanched his weathered cheeks and widened his eyes in horrified comprehension. This sound was a slow and relentless groan which emanated from the very heart of the bark herself. By some convergent pressure, her timbers were being squeezed and ground between floes and berg. A fraction of an inch at a time, she was being crushed. “We have a choice,” said Frontin coolly, when he saw that the other understood. “We may stay here and fight, blast holes in the ice, open a channel--and abandon the cap’n. We cannot rescue both him and the ship. Time presses, and we lack men.” “But you would leave her, and all she contains?” “Follow the star!” Frontin uttered a short, hard laugh. “Follow the star, take that other ship----” “Man, are you mad?” broke out Sir Phelim. “You yourself have gold aboard here, and we cannot carry it over the ice!” “The devil gave the gold, let him take it again,” and Frontin waved his pipe carelessly. “Do you love gold? Neither do I. The Star of Dreams has gone aboard another ship, and we follow. That is all. Her crew outnumbers us, true, but they have no star.” Burke frowned thoughtfully. “Yet the ice is moving. There will be open channels to cross.” “We shall take the small boat to cross them, then. Listen! The movement has increased; all the ice outside here is moving now. Perhaps we have reached the end of this abominable delay! To-night we may either be free of the ice, or again inclosed. However, I can find that corvette.” They were silent. That horrible squeezing groan of wrenched oak was no longer to be heard. Perhaps the pressure on the bark was relieved, perhaps the sound was drowned in the increasing tumult from the fog-wrapped ice all around. The tumult had become a cacaphony of hideous noise. Out there in the fog the ice was heaving up in great masses and falling again, bursting into fragments, sliding and rending and crashing.