It was sufficient. The captain _was_ going among the fields. The mate needed no plainer answer to his question.
"Beg pardon, sir," he muttered meekly. "I thought you was."
When the ship passed into the lane, the storm burst overhead. The scunner in the foretop was near blinded by the driven snow. His voice was swept hither and thither by the wind. Directions came to the bridge in broken sentences. The captain dared not longer drive the vessel at full speed.
The ship crept along. For half an hour, while the night drew on, not a word was spoken, save the captain's quiet "Port!" and "Starboard!" into the wheelhouse tube. Then the mate heard the old man mutter:
No other reference was made to the boy. In the captain's mind, thereafter, for all the mate knew, young Archibald Armstrong, the owner's son, was merely one of a crew of sixty men, lost on the floe.
"Ice ahead!" screamed the lookout in the bow.
The ship was brought to a stop. The lane she had been following had closed before her. The mate went forward.
Broken ice, then, had come down with the wind. It had been carried into the channels, choking them.
"Does you see water beyond, b'y?" the captain shouted.
The captain signalled "Go ahead!" The chance must be taken. To be caught between two fields in a great storm was a fearful situation. So the ship pushed into the ice, moving at a snail's pace, labouring hard, and complaining of the pressure upon her ribs. Soon she made no progress whatever. The screw was turning noisily; the vessel throbbed with the labour of the engines; but she was at a standstill.
"Ay, mate," the captain said, blankly, "stuck."
The ship struggled bravely to force her way on; but the ice, wedged all about her, was too heavy.
"God help the men!" said the captain, as he signalled for the stopping of the engines. "We're stuck!"
"An' God help us," the mate added, in the same spirit, "if the fields come together!"
Conceive the situation of the _Dictator_. She lay between two of many vast, shifting fields, all of immeasurable mass. The captain had deliberately subjected her to the chances in an effort to rescue the men for whom he was accountable to the women and children of Green Bay. She was caught; and if the wind should drive the fields together, her case would be desperate, indeed. The slow, mighty pressure exerted by such masses is irresistible. The ship would either be crushed to splinters, or--a slender chance--she would be lifted out of danger for the time.