"Aloft, lads—all hands aloft!" cried Hartly; "we are about to be crushed—God help us! for all is over with us now!"
All our men rushed into the rigging on hearing this terrible announcement, and at the same moment there was another crashing shock, and lo! about a league from us, there ascended slowly and vertically into the air, a sheet or wall of ice, perhaps twenty feet thick, nearly a hundred feet in height, and several miles in length!
Erect it stood for some moments, like a giant rampart, and then broke into fragments, and as the field collapsed below, these fell with a roar as if heaven and earth were coming together.
How many millions of tons might have been in that erected mass no man could conceive, but the thunder of their fall, as they crashed and glittered in the moonlight, caused one's soul to shrink with awe and wonder at the grandeur and sublimity of such a scene.
The ice around us cracked and rent in every direction, but though there was a vibration, a seeming heaving of the icebound sea, the brig settled down again into her bed, and we were only relieved of that intense pressure which had threatened us with immediate destruction.
"We are saved—for this time," said Hartly.
"Have the currents caused this?" I inquired.
"Partly: and the east edge of the ice-field has crashed upon a western shore."
"Greenland?" suggested Paul Reeves.
"Of course."