Fortunately, she was saved by the action of the berg. An immense mass broke off from that part which lay beneath the water-surface, and this colossal fragment, a dozen times larger than the schooner, came rushing up within a few yards of them, sending a vast volume of foam and water flying from its sides. This rupture arrested the rotatory motion of the berg, which then began to settle in another direction, and the schooner was able to sheer off.
At this moment the crew were startled by a loud report. Another and another followed in quick succession, until the din grew deafening, and the whole air seemed a reservoir of chaotic sounds. The opposite side of the berg had split off, piece after piece, toppling a vast volume of ice into the sea, and sending the berg revolving back upon the ship. Then the side nearest to them underwent the same singular process of disruption, and came plunging wildly down into the sea, sending over them a shower of spray, and raising a swell which rocked the ship to and fro as in a gale of wind, and left her grinding in the débris of the crumbling ruin.
“The ice was here,
The ice was there,
The ice was all around;
It creaked and growled,
And roared and howled,
Like demons in a swound.”
It is impossible, we should say, for any one who has not had actual experience of the conditions of the Arctic world, to comprehend or imagine the immense quantity of ice upborne on its cold bleak waters. The mere enumeration of the floating bergs at times defies the navigator. Dr. Hayes once counted as far as five hundred, and then gave up in despair. Near by they stood out, he says, in all the rugged harshness of their sharp outlines; and from this, softening with the distance, they melted away into the clear gray sky; and there, far off upon the sea of liquid silver, the imagination conjured up the strangest and most wonderful groups and objects. Birds and beasts and human forms and architectural designs took shape in the distant masses of blue and white. The dome of St. Peter’s was recognizable here; then the spire of a village church rose sharp and distinct; and under the shadow of the Pyramids nestled a Byzantine tower and a Grecian temple.
“To the eastward,” says Dr. Hayes, describing a similar scene, “the sea was dotted with little islets—dark specks upon a brilliant surface. Icebergs, great and small, crowded through the channels which divided them, until in the far distance they appeared massed together, terminating against a snow-covered plain that sloped upward until it was lost in a dim line of bluish whiteness. This line could be traced behind the serrated coast as far to the north and south as the eye could carry. It was the great Mer de Glace[7] which covers the length and breadth of the Greenland continent. The snow-covered slope was a glacier descending therefrom—the parent stem from which had been discharged, at irregular intervals, many of the icebergs which troubled us so much.”