“De-ah me!” from Cockie.
“Dat am quite true, Cockie, and de heads and de legs am flying about in all directions! It is too drefful to behold!”
“Now then, young Roley Poley!” cried Peter, entering at that moment, “toddle away forward for some boiling-hot coffee, and run quicker than ever you ran in your life.”
“I’se off like a bird!” said Freezing Powders, darting out of the cabin as if there had been a boot after him.
Chapter Twenty Two.
Captain Cobb Retires—More Torpedoing—The Great Ice-Hole—Strange Sport—The Terrible Zugaena—The Death Struggle.
Both Captain McBain and Silas Grig felt more easy in their minds when they had got fairly rid of the green-rooted monsters of icebergs that had lain so placidly yet so threateningly alongside their respective ships. And oh! by the way, how very calm, harmless, and gentle bergs like these can look, when there is no disturbing element beneath them, their snow-clad tops asleep and glistening in the sunlight; but I have seen them angry, grinding and crashing together, each upheaval representing a height of from fifteen to thirty feet; each upheaval representing a strength hydraulic equal in force to the might of the great ocean itself.
Our heroes had taken time by the forelock. They had “guncottoned the bergs,” as Captain Cobb termed it, and lay for the time being in square ice-locked harbours, and could bid defiance to almost any ordinary occurrence, whether gale of wind in the pack or swell from the distant sea.