All who could cultivate beards had permitted them to grow in Crimean luxuriance, as any attempt at soapsudding in those latitudes produced a coating of ice in a moment.
Surging on through blinding drift and pitchy darkness, amid the howling of the fierce tempest, the Leda went bravely! Her spars and cordage straining and groaning, her timbers creaking, while wave after wave broke over her decks and hardy crew, each leaving its legacy of ice upon everything. From time to time we were conscious of a rude shock, or a furious scraping sound, as she grazed upon the passing floes; and now, to add to the gloomy horrors of that tempestuous night, Paul Reeves, who was keeping an anxious look-out forward, shouted back through his trumpet—
"Icebergs ahead! Hard to port, or we are foul of one!"
"Hard to port," echoed the two men at the wheel; sharply it revolved, and in a moment we swept under the frowning cliff of a stupendous iceberg, the cold white mass of which was discernible through the gloom, as the arm of the mainyard grazed it!
We passed on and it vanished in the darkness astern.
"Thank Heaven!"
"Thank God!"
"A narrow escape!"
Such were the muttered exclamations of our half-frozen crew; but at that instant an icy sea broke over us, and two men were swept into a watery grave, without the possibility of our rendering them the least assistance.
A minute had scarcely elapsed before we were sensible of a fierce concussion; the masts reeled and the icicles fell in a shower as they were shaken from our stiffened top-hamper. Then the brig's head was tilted up and her stern correspondingly depressed; but still impelled by the fury of the wind, she continued to advance upwards and out of the water, as if she was being steamed up a landing-slip, or into a dry dock.