It was a fearful shock. The vessel quivered, crushed her way on for a space, and stopped dead, quivering still. A groan ran over her, from stem to stern, as though she had been racked in every part. The main topmast snapped and fell forward on the rigging with a crash.
A volley of cracks sounded from the ice, like the discharge of a thousand rifles, slowly subsiding. Dead silence fell and continued for a moment. Then the screw churned the water, and the ship backed off, sound, but beaten; for the pan of ice lay, unbroken and unchanged, in its place, with but a jagged bruise, where the blow had been struck.
"Aloft, there, some o' you, an' cut away that spar!" the captain shouted. "Bill, get below, an' see if she's tight. Here, you, Dickson, call the watch t' make sail. Mr. Girth," to the second mate, "take a crew t' the ice. Blast that pan in three places. Lively, now, every man o' you!"
Roaring subordinates, answering "Ay, ay, sirs!" rattling blocks and chains, the fall of hurried feet, cries of warning and encouragement, the engine's gasps: these sounds confounded the confusion, and continued it, while the ship, snorting like a frightened horse, was backed to her first position.
"He'll try it again," Archie gleefully observed to Billy.
The captain was pacing the bridge. Try it again? He was in a fever of impatience to be at it! It was as though the pan of ice were a foe needing only another and a heavier blow to be beaten down.
"Sure," said Billy, after a glance to the bridge, "he'll hit that pan till he smashes it, if it takes till Tibb's Eve!"
"Sure, b'y. Does you not know what that is? 'Tis till the end o' the world."
The ship was again to be launched against the pan. The second mate took the blasting crew to the ice in the quarter boat; and he lost no time about it, as the captain made sure. Up aloft went other hands to cut away the broken spar and loose the canvas. Work was carried on under the spur of the captain's harshened voice; for the captain was in a passion to prove the quality of his ship.
The ice picks were plied as fast as arms could swing them. Soon the mines were laid and fired. And when the dust of ice had fallen, and the noise of the explosion had gone rumbling into the distance, three gaping holes marked the pan at regular intervals from edge to edge.