The Sea Lions

Excerpt: ... Stephen both came panting down to the house; so much easier is it to descend in this world than to mount. A swivel was instantly loaded and fired as a signal; and, in half an hour, a boat was manned and ready. Roswell took command himself, leaving his second mate to look after the schooner. Stimson went with his captain, and in less than one hour after he had first seen the strange sail, our hero was actually pulling out of the cove, with a view to go to her assistance. Roswell Gardiner was as good-hearted a fellow as ever lived. He had a sufficient regard for his own interests, as well as for those of others entrusted to his care; but, these main points looked after, he would cheerfully have worked a month to relieve the Vineyard-men from the peril that so plainly beset them. Setting his sails the instant the boat was clear of the rocks, away he went, then, as fast as ash and canvass could carry him, which was at a rate but little short of eight knots in the hour. As he was thus flying towards his object, our young mariner formed a theory in his own mind, touching the drift of the ice in the adjacent seas. It was simply this. He had sounded in entering the great bay, and had ascertained that comparatively shallow water existed between the south-eastern extremity of Sealer's Land and the nearest island opposite. It was deep enough to admit the largest vessel that ever floated, and a great deal more than this; but it was not deep enough to permit an ice-berg to pass. The tides, too, ran in races among the islands, which prevented the accumulation of ice at the southern entrance, while the outer currents seemed to set everything past the group to allow of the floating mountains to collect to the eastward, where they appeared to be thronged. It was on the western verge of this wilderness of ice-bergs and ice fields that the strange sail had been seen working her way towards the group, which must be plainly in view from her decks, as her distance from...