But woe betide the vessel that depended on a misplaced beacon. It was this that nearly, so very nearly, ended the career of the “Gazelle” and her crew. At Goose Island, on the Missouri side, they ran aground, having laid their course according to a misplaced light.
It was a very serious situation which these youngsters had to face. The boat was caught hard and fast in a stream running from four to five miles an hour, carrying great chunks of ice that struck all obstacles with the force of battering rams. The bar was almost in midstream, too far away from shore to hail. A small boat of “His Nibs’s” strength would not live in the ice ten minutes. It was about as grim a predicament as could be imagined. All the sails were spread, the board raised, and the crew, with the exception of the man at the helm, shoved with oars for hours; but the “Gazelle” did not budge an inch.
Then they tried to take an anchor out, but “His Nibs” was no sooner put overboard than a big cake of ice came along and gave the light little craft such a terrific thump that the boys pulled her in hurriedly—they could not afford to run any risks with the only means they had of reaching shore.
Hour by hour the cold increased, until it got close to the zero mark, and as the weather became colder the streams supplying the Mississippi froze up, and the water of the great stream grew less and less.
The boys worked with desperation—stayed up late at night and rose at daybreak, hoping for a rise of water or a favorable slant of wind. The increased cold made it necessary to keep the oil stove burning, and the fuel began to get low. While sailing along the river, whose banks were lined with towns, the boys did not lay in a great stock of provisions; they thought it better to get them in fresh as frequently as possible.
“Well, Ken,” Clyde remarked the third day of their imprisonment on the bar, “we will have to live on raw potatoes and river water pretty soon. My oil is about gone, and everything else is almost eaten up.”
“There is one more thing to do,” the captain said at length. “Throw out our pig iron ballast. I hate to lose it, but it is the only thing left to do.”
All of the boys showed the effects of tremendously hard work, of the fight with cold and ice, with wind and water, but Kenneth was particularly worn. On him fell the responsibility. The others were in his care, and if anything happened to them he knew he would be held accountable. The constant strain, the lack of sleep—he was up all hours of the night—and his anxiety, told on even his rugged health. He grew perceptibly thinner in three days, dark rings showed under his eyes, and little things vexed him unwarrantably. They were all irritable, and it speaks well for their closely knit friendship that no words arose between them.