Midway ’twixt Nipzet Sound and Cape Mercy, just a little to the nor’ard of Cumberland Gulf, I mark the point with a plus.
It was in a gale of wind, and at the dead of night, when she was surrounded by an immense shoal of flat bergs, of giant proportions, and staved irremediably. The water came roaring in below. Pumping was of no avail. She must founder, and that very soon. So every effort consonant with safety was made to embark upon the very icebergs that had caused the grief. Stores and water were speedily got out, therefore, and long ere the break of day the end came, the ship was engulphed. There was no longer any Fairy Queen to glide over the seas like a thing of life—only two wave-washed bergs, each with a huddled crew of hopeless shipwrecked mariners.
And these were already separating. They had bade each other adieu.
They were gliding away, or south or north or east or west, they knew not whither.
Book Two—Chapter Five.
Afloat on an Iceberg.
“Midnight soft and fair above,
Midnight fierce and dark beneath,
All on high the smile of love,
All below the frown of death:
“Waves that whirl in angry spite
With a phosphorescent light,
Gleaming ghastly in the night,
Like the pallid sneer of Doom.”
Tupper.
