To Mary and her father Skipper Libe had with seamanlike courtesy abandoned the tiny cabin. The child was lying in the skipper's own berth--warmly covered, comfortably tucked in, provided with a book to read by the light of the swinging lamp.
The man took the child's hand. "I'm sometimes sorry," he said, "that we didn't wait for the mail-boat. The _Fish Killer_ is a pretty tough craft for a little girl to be aboard."
"Sorry?" was the instant response, made with a little smile. "I'm not. I'm glad. Isn't Cape Grief close to leeward? Well, then, father, we're half way home. Think of it! _We're--half--way--home!_"
"And we might have been waiting at St. John's," the child continued, her blue eyes shining. "Oh, father, I'd rather be aboard the _Fish Killer_ off Grief Head than in the very best room of the Crosbie Hotel. Half way home!" she repeated. "Half way home!"
"On this coast," the father sighed, "no man is home until he gets there."
"But they've reefed the mains'l; they've stowed the stays'l; they've got the tops'l down. Haven't you heard them? I've been listening----"
It was a mere ejaculation of terror. He had no need to ask the question. Even Mary knew well enough what had happened. The _Fish Killer_ had struck an iceberg bow on. The shock; the crash forward; the clatter of a falling topmast; the cries on deck: these things were alive with the fearful information.
_The Crew of the Fish Killer Finds Refuge on an Iceberg, and Discovers Greater Safety Elsewhere, after Which the Cook is Mistaken for a Fool, but puts the Crew to Shame_
ROBINSON caught the child from the berth. He paused--it was an instinct born of Labrador experience--to wrap a blanket about her, though she was clothed for the day. She reminded him quietly that she would catch cold without her cap; and this he snatched in passing. Then he was on deck--in the midst of a litter from aloft and of a vast confusion of terrified cries.
Before she struck, the _Fish Killer_ had ascended a gently shelving beach of ice, washed smooth by the sea. There she hung precariously. Her stem was low, so low that the choppy sea came aboard and swamped the cabin; and the bow was high on the ice. Her bowsprit was in splinters, her topmast on deck, her spliced mainmast tottering; she was the bedraggled wreck of a craft.