Both these icebergs were several miles in circumference. The summit of ours was flat as a bowling-green; but that portion on which the brig rested was soft, pulpy, and rotten by its long immersion in the sea.
The other had many spiral pinnacles, some of them being several hundred feet in height; and, save for the peril in which we were situated, I could have admired the sublimity of that cold and silent mass—so dazzlingly white when the beams of the rising sun fell on it, so indigo-blue in its shadows—for it resembled a fairy isle, which had steep hills, deep valleys, and chasms all fashioned of alabaster; while around its base was a thick fringe of frozen foam of snowy brilliance.
While we were gazing upon it that morning, one of its loftiest pinnacles, with a mighty crash, fell thundering into the sea.
The Leda was soon frozen into the bed she had ploughed by her keel in the ice; and how to get her launched again, how to descend from our perilous eminence, were the questions we asked of each other, and which no one could answer.
The summit of the berg was nearly a mile in circumference, and, as I have said, was more than eighty feet from the water. This we ascertained as a fact, though there was no small peril in venturing from the ship upon its surface, which was so glassy and smooth that in some places the lightest among us would have slipped off, as if shot by a catapulta, into the sea below.
Council and deliberation availed us nothing. Even Hartly, Reeves, and Hans, with all their united skill, foresight, and seamanship, found their invention fail in suggesting any means of release.
"There is nothing for it but to wait the event," said Hartly, after a long and solemn council.
"But suppose that we waited a month, captain," asked Reeves, gloomily, "where would our provisions be?—where our fresh water?"
"We may be driven south into warmer latitudes where the bergs melt rapidly in the sunshine."
"But we may be drifted north into latitudes where the bergs freeze harder, and where ice may close around us for ever," said Hans Peterkin.