"The captain is showing a signal to indicate her whereabouts. He has heard the noise of the splitting ice."
"If a fog should come on!" said I.
"Don't think of it, sir," said my companion, hastily; "the night is as clear as if day were overhead. So let us find the end of this crack; it cannot be very far off."
We proceeded westward for more than a mile, being compelled to make many detours to avoid falling into the water among the ragged floes or pieces of ice that lay along the margin of this zigzag fissure; but, as it extended far away beyond the range of our vision, and seemed to widen, we were compelled after long consideration, and suffering great anxiety, to retrace our steps and proceed eastward, in the hope of gaining the east end of it, or at least of discovering a place so narrow that we might leap across without the danger of immersion, which, in such a season and at such an hour, would have been fatal, as our entire clothing would in an instant have become a casing of ice.
To favour our efforts the moon now rose, ascending slowly from the edge of the vast plain of ice, and notwithstanding the peril of our situation, her beauty filled me with a glow of pleasure and hope.
Far over that waste—so wide, so desolate, and mysterious—fell her flood of silver light, so bright in its intensity, and redoubled by reflection from the snow. It glittered on every rounded hummock and splintered berg, and formed strange fantastic figures in their cold green shadows, elsewhere making prisms that seemed like fairy crystals, or gemwork of rubies, emeralds, and silver. Clouds of fleecy whiteness came up with her from the sea, and as she waded among them, I recalled the words of Sir Walter Scott:—
"There is something peculiarly pleasing to the imagination in contemplating the Queen of Night when she is wading, as the expression is, among the vapours which she has not the power to dispel, and which on their side are unable entirely to quench her lustre. It is the striking image of patient virtue calmly pursuing her path through good report and bad report, having that excellence in herself which ought to command all admiration; but bedimmed in the eyes of the world by suffering, by misfortune, and by calumny."
While I felt something of the poetry of our situation and the beauty of the night, my more practical and prosaic companion was sensible only of the danger we ran, and after a minute reconnaissance, assured me, with an exclamation of joy, that the split in the ice was narrowing.
We were then four miles from the brig, the crew of which had sent more lanterns aloft, and ever and anon burned a brilliant red or blue light, for Cuffy Snowball was a great pyrotechnist.
"What is that?" said I, as a strange sound reached us.