“The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want,
He makes me down to lie
By pastures green; He leadeth me
The quiet waters by.”
A strange sight on that clear, still, dark ocean, the white iceberg with its living freight drifting aimlessly about. Strange sound, this song of praise, rising from their cold, blue lips, and from hearts that hardly dared to hope.
Another day and another went by, and on the Wednesday an accident happened that had well-nigh proved fatal to nearly all on board the berg. More than one-third part of their ice-ship parted and fell away. Luckily it first gave voice, and showed the rent before finally dropping off.
There was no denying it, the danger was now extreme. They had been drifting slowly southwards, and the iceberg was being influenced by warmer currents, and slowly wearing away.
It might, moreover, topple over at any moment. Things came to their very worst that same evening when another piece of the berg plunged into the sea, and when morning broke, there was barely room for the men to huddle together, looking fearfully around them, and down into the still black water, and at those hungry sharks, who now seemed to gambol about as if in momentary expectation of their prey.
“Look!” cried Douglas about noon that day, “what is that dark object yonder on that immense iceberg that we have been skirting these last two hours?”
“Seals, I think,” said Leonard, in a feeble, hopeless voice.
“I think not, Leon. Oh, lad! I think they are men.”
“Let us signal, anyhow.”