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Every one of them lay below decks fast asleep, and there was no sound of talk to which the skipper might be listening. As the storm came sweeping over the icebound gallias it threw itself upon the vessel, as though from old habit it would drive her through the water. And as the ship still stood fast the wind took hold of her again and again.
Now and then the boys so far forgot their dignity as to clamber among the icebound canal boats crowded together in a widened harbor off the canal, but the watchful guards would soon spy them out and order them down with a growl.
The company were borne in two ships, each of about sixty tons burden, and numbered in all sixty-one souls. The passage across the ocean was pleasant. Fair winds, blowing fresh and strong from the east, carried the clumsy caravels westward on the foaming crests of the Atlantic surges. Within twenty days of their departure the icebound shores of Newfoundland rose before their eyes.
The country was called Greenland because its southern extremity was first seen in spring-time, and presented a pleasing appearance, but it was speedily found to be little better than an icebound region.
Once a fortnight during the winter an ice-boat crosses Northumberland Strait, at great hazard, where it is only nine miles wide, conveying the English mail; but sometimes all the circumstances are not favourable, and the letters are delayed for a month the poor islanders being locked meanwhile in their icebound prison, ignorant of the events which may be convulsing the world.
But the pioneer company had to set out in haste, and were very imperfectly supplied with necessaries. The cold was intense. They moved in the teeth of keen-edged northwest winds, such as sweep down the Iowa peninsula from the icebound regions of the timber-shaded Slave Lake and Lake of the Woods.
It was as if someone were digging! Were the Reds engaged in enlarging their icebound headquarters? Having listened for a considerable time, Ross doubted that, for the sound was too irregular. It seemed almost as if the longer pauses were used to check up on the result of labor was it the extent of the excavation or the continued preservation of secrecy?
No whirring wings rush past; there is no sound of "dragon-fly, or painted moth, or musical winged bee" to break the stillness; all the insect-world seems dead, or flown south with the swallows though, as there are still spiders' webs to be seen, each delicate thread marked in sharp outline, like the rigging of an icebound ship, it would seem that there must still remain some unwary fly to be taken in the beautiful snare.
A night had begun which was to continue perhaps for months, a longer and drearier night than that which voyagers are compelled to endure when their ship is icebound, throughout the winter, in the Arctic Ocean. His dear father and mother, his brother George, and the sweet face of little Emily Robinson must all vanish and leave him in utter darkness and solitude.
There stood poor little Gerda, without shoes or gloves, in the middle of freezing icebound Finmark. She ran forward as quickly as she could. A whole regiment of snow-flakes came towards her; they did not fall from the sky, for it was quite clear, with the northern lights shining brightly. No; these snow-flakes ran along the ground, and the nearer they came the bigger they grew.
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