A few days later there was another shocking headline: PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN ASSASSINATED!

Ten

Gus wrapped his arms across his chest and tucked his icy hands into his armpits. He had never known it could be so cold! But the spectacle before him kept him on deck, rather than retreating to the warmth of the galley. Last night, when he had gone to bed, the ship had been enveloped in a thick fog; but he had woken to find her transformed into a fairyland. Every rope and spar was outlined in sparkling ice, and icicles feet long hung from the yards. Even the sails looked like sheets of ice. The sun, which never disappeared for more than an hour or so, hung low above the horizon and in its light everything about the ship glittered.

Voices from the quarterdeck above told him that the officers were equally enthralled and some of their comments brought home to him that for these southerners the sight of ice was even more remarkable than it was to him. He had memories of windows rimed with frost and games of snowballs in the yard at the workhouse, but he had never seen anything like this.

A shout from the lookout in the bow broke the enchantment.

‘Ice, dead ahead.’

Gus went to the rail and peered forwards. Lying across their path, a few hundred yards distant, was a solid wall of ice and they were headed straight towards it.

Feet pounded the deck in response to shouts from the officer of the watch. ‘Get those sails stowed. We need to get weigh off her, fast.’

Men laid hold of the icy ropes but, pull as they might, nothing moved. Blocks and lines were frozen solid and the breeze was still propelling the Shenandoah towards the ice. More shouts ordered the topgallant men aloft. Gus watched, holding his breath, as step by cautious step they crept upwards. He still remembered vividly how he had felt when Captain Thomas had made him climb the mast on the training ship – and that had been firmly set on the ground. Now, to see men climbing the swaying mast, when every surface was slippery with ice, seemed to him to ask almost more than human powers could accomplish. The men reached the point where the yards to which the sails were attached sprouted sideways from the mast and began to inch their way out along them. Each man carried a spanner or a wrench and with these they began to knock the ice off the frozen blocks. It took a long time and all the while the ice came closer.