"We are ashore—beached!" said some one, beholding this phenomenon.
"We are foul of an iceberg," exclaimed Hartly, while the brig continued slowly to ascend till little more than the sternpost and counter were in the water; then she heeled over to port and remained there, wedged, with her jib-boom broken off at the cap, and dangling in the jib-guys, her canvas bellying out so furiously that we thought the masts would be carried away before the benumbed fingers of the seamen could get it handed.
In a trice the Leda was under bare poles, while around us the tempestuous wind was bellowing, the surf was roaring, and vast blocks of ice, many tons in weight, were crashing against each other, adding to the dread horrors of this bewildering catastrophe!
It is impossible to depict the dismay of all on board, when finding the vessel in this situation—high and dry upon a berg; for, influenced by the storm, by the wind, or the slight additional weight of the brig and her cargo, we felt the monstrous mass on which we were wedged, oscillating and gradually heeling forward ahead; thus the stern of the Leda was raised until her hull remained in the air horizontally, just as she usually sat in the water.
In blank horror we endured the gloomy hours of that northern night, amid the drift, the sleet, and a darkness so dense that we could in no way discover our real position, or how to extricate ourselves from it.
One fact, we were alarmingly alive to. It was this:—The sea no longer dashed against the hull of our vessel, which lay on her side, well careened over to port; and though we could hear the roaring of the waves, amid the oppressive gloom that enveloped us, we could no longer see them.
As day broke the tempest gradually lulled, and the sleet, the snow, and wind passed away together. Then the increasing light enabled us to see the perils of our situation.
We were nearly eighty feet above the ocean, on the flat, table-like summit of a mighty iceberg; which, though it had presented a sloping face up which we had run last night before the furious wind and sea, had now changed its position by heeling over, as icebergs always do, from time to time, when their base in the ocean becomes honeycombed and decayed.*
* Her Majesty's steam ship Intrepid, when commanded by Captain Cator, was similarly carried bodily up the face of a berg, and left high and dry in air, without injury.
The sky was clear now to the horizon; the icefield on which we had pursued our hunting so successfully was no longer visible; but about half a mile distant lay the island of floating ice we had escaped last night; and around for miles, far as the eye could reach, the sea, still perturbed by the past storm, was flecked by white floes, the ruins probably of a third berg, which had been shattered by the waves or by being dashed against others.