[7] A floe of pans so forcibly driven by the wind as to be crowded into layers.
_The Ice Runs Red, and, in Storm and Dusk, Tim Tuttle Brews a Pot o' Trouble for Captain Hand, While Billy Topsail Observes the Operation_
MEANTIME the ship drew near the ice. When Archie came again on deck, his nerves quite composed, she was being driven in and out through the fields to a point as near to the first seal pack as she could be taken--a mile distant, at the least. During this tedious search for a landing place, the crew's eager excitement passed the bounds of discipline. The men could see the crew from Alexander Bryan & Company's _Lucky Star_ at work; and that excited them the more: they were mad to reach the ice before their rivals could molest the pack for which they were bound.
When, at last, the engines were stopped, a party of sixty was formed in a haphazard fashion; the boats were lowered in haste, and the men leaped and tumbled into them, crowding them down to the gunwales. In one of the boats were Archie and Billy, the former in the care of Bill o' Burnt Bay, to whom the "nursing" was not altogether agreeable, under the circumstances; the latter in charge of himself, a lenient guardian, but a wise one.
"Don't get into trouble with the crew o' the _Lucky Star_," had been the captain's last command.
The men landed, hurrahing, and at once organized into half a dozen separate expeditions. The direction to be taken by each was determined by the leaders, and they set off at a dog trot upon their diverging paths over the ice to the widely distributed seal pack. Meantime, the boats were taken back to the ship and hoisted in; and the ship steamed off to land another party on another field, thence to land the last party near a third pack.
The boys trotted in Bill's wake. Two pennant bearers, carrying flags to mark the heaps of "fat," as they should be formed, led the file. One of these men--it happened by chance, to all appearances--was the captain's enemy, Tim Tuttle. Their work was particularly important on that day, with the crew of the _Lucky Star_ working so near at hand; for the flags were to mark the ownership of the mounds of "fat," and any tampering with these "brands" would be likely to precipitate a violent encounter between the men of the rival ships.