To his disappointment, Raynor was not allowed on the boats that took the water party ashore on Skull Island. He and Noddy had to content themselves with watching the operations ashore.
It was night when the work had been completed and the casks all filled. Terror Carson, therefore, decided to remain at anchor off the island all night. This was against the advice of his mate, who counseled making for the open sea.
“I don’t like the look of the weather,” he said, regarding certain yellowish castellated clouds that hung on the northern horizon. But Terror Carson only laughed.
“This is a snug enough berth,” he declared. “We’ll lie here till daylight. Then for a dash across the boundary and some fine Canadian seals.”
But by midnight it was seen that the mate’s advice had been good. Without warning on the barometer, a furious storm swept down on the anchored schooner. She began to drag. Two more anchors were let go and she held securely. But now another peril appeared.
Huge fields of drift ice and growlers, driven from the north by the storm, drove down on the Polly Ann. The ice crunched against her sides like rasping teeth. It seemed as if the forces of nature had combined to destroy her.
The stout timbers of her hull cracked ominously under the terrific pressure. There was no sleep on board. All hands were on deck. Terror Carson, more perturbed than Raynor had ever seen him, strode the deck as if distracted.
The schooner was the apple of his eye. But now it appeared that she was doomed, and through his fault.
There was nothing to be done. A sickly gray dawn showed the schooner surrounded by ice for miles. Almost as far as the eye could reach, in fact.
“We’ll never get out of here alive,” declared the sailors.
“Nothing but bad luck has followed us on this trip,” was another remark heard among them.
All that day the Polly Ann held together. Terror Carson grew more confident.
“The old hooker will weather it yet,” he declared. But the mate shook his head.
“She’ll leave her bones here,” he said.
Carson turned on him like an infuriated wild beast.
“One more word like that and I’ll knock what serves you for brains out of your thick skull,” he snarled, and fell to pacing the poop.
Completely tired out, Raynor sought his bunk that night and fell into a deep sleep of exhaustion. He had not closed his eyes the night before and even the perilous position of the ship could not have kept him on his feet.
When he awakened, sunshine was streaming into the port of his cabin.
“Gracious!” he gasped. “I must be late. Carson will half kill me.”
He hustled into some clothes and emerged into the outer cabin. Almost instantly he stepped into water which the tilt of the ship had prevented penetrating into his cabin. The water almost covered the main cabin floor. The tilt of the ship made it deeper on the opposite side of the cabin.
“The ice has crushed the Polly Ann’s ribs,” exclaimed the boy. “She is doomed.”
He rushed on deck. The next instant he stood still at the top of the companionway, stricken with stupefaction.
The decks, usually at that hour alive with men, were deserted. Not a soul was to be seen either fore or aft.
What had happened? Then Raynor’s eyes wandered to the davits where the big whale boats used in sealing, generally hung.
They were empty!
The boats were gone!
In a flash he realized what had occurred. The crushing of the Polly Ann had happened in the night. Knowing that she was doomed the crew had taken to the boats, which could push a way through the drift ice and left the ship.
“Oh, the cowards! the cowards!” cried Raynor, in an agony of anger and apprehension.
The schooner was sinking under his feet and he had no means of escape. He was doomed to go to the bottom of the Arctic Sea in her without the chance to make a struggle for his life. For a few minutes he almost went mad. He rushed up and down the decks shouting and raving like a lunatic. Then he suddenly came to his senses.
He must be calm. There was nothing to be gained by losing his head. Never had he needed the cool use of all his faculties so urgently as he did now. He sat down on one of the knightheads forward and concentrated his mind on his situation.
Suddenly he sprang to his feet with a shout.
“What a blind idiot I’ve been!” he cried aloud, “the dories. I never thought of them.”
It was curious but true, that in his excitement the lad had entirely forgotten, for the time being, the half dozen dories “nested” on the after deck. Now, however, the recollection of them affected him like a tonic. He began bustling about making his preparations to leave the Polly Ann to her ocean grave.