Then they might proceed southward as well as if they should start from Lake Shiver.
But this did not suit Mr.Gibbs.He had a very strong desire to reach the waters of the little lake, because he knew that at their bottom lay the telegraphic cable which he had been obliged to abandon, and he had thought he might be able to raise this cable and re-establish telegraphic communication with Cape Tariff and New Jersey.
Sammy thought that Mr.Gibbs's desire could be accomplished by sinking into the water in which they now lay and sailing under the icebergs to the lake, but Mr.Gibbs did not favor this.

He was afraid to go under the icebergs.

To be sure, they had already sailed under one of them when the Dipsey had made her way northward from the lake, but they had found that the depth of water varied very much in different places, and the icebergs in front of them might be heavier, and therefore more deeply sunken, than those which they had previously passed under.
If it were possible to extend their canal to Lake Shiver, Mr.Gibbs wanted to do it, but if they should fail in this, then, of course, they would be obliged to go down at this or some adjacent spot.
"It's all very well," said Captain Hubbell, who was a little depressed in spirits because the time was rapidly approaching when he would no longer command the vessel, "but it's one thing to blow a canal through fields of flat ice, and another to make it all the way through an iceberg; but if you think you can do it, I am content.

I'd like to sail above water just as far as we can go." Mr.Gibbs had been studying the situation, and some ideas relating to the solution of the problem before him were forming themselves in his mind.

At last he hit upon a plan which he thought might open the waters of Lake Shiver to the Dipsey, and, as it would not take very long to test the value of his scheme, it was determined to make the experiment.
There were but few on board who did not know that if a needle were inserted into the upper part of a large block of ice, and were then driven smartly into it, the ice would split.