“And the brig wouldn’t come up, try all we could. Bill and I could have screamed with rage; but in another minute we were laughing with joy.
“The light got clear; and there, to our horror, just where we wanted the dear old brig to go—and she wouldn’t go, like a sensible creature, although we cursed her for not obeying the helm—was an enormous iceberg rising out of the depths of the ocean, and towering above the masts of the poor Jane, which I feel loth to call ‘cranky’ any longer—as high almost as the eyes could see, like the cliffs at Dover, only a hundred yards higher, without exaggeration! If the brig had come up to the wind, as Mr Stanchion sang out for us to make her, why, two minutes after, she would have struck full into the iceberg, and running, as she was, good fourteen knots and more under her jib and main-sail, her bows would have stoved in, and we’d all have been in Davy Jones’s locker before we could have said Jack Robinson!
“As it was, we weren’t out of danger by any means. There were icebergs to the right of us; icebergs astern of us, by which we had passed probably when Pat first complained of feeling the cold; icebergs ahead of us, through which we would have gingerly to make our way, for we had no option with the gale that was blowing but to keep the same course we were on, as to lie to amidst all that ice would be more dangerous even than moving on; and the big, enormous berg we had just escaped was on our left, or port side properly speaking—looking, for all the world, like a curving range of cliffs on some rock-bound coast, as it spread out more than five or six miles in length. It was certainly the biggest iceberg I ever saw in my life, beating to nothing all that I afterwards noticed in the Arctic seas when I went north in the Polaris; and perhaps that is the reason why all the ice mounds I saw there became so dwarfed by comparison that they looked quite insignificant.
“Pat kept on the forecastle, looking out and directing the course of the vessel, as the cap’en, who had just come on deck, roused by the noise, thought the Irishman’s experience in the Arctic seas would make him more useful even than himself in coursing the ship.
“The skipper was right as usual; and Pat had soon a chance of showing that his choice had not been misplaced.
“‘Kape her away! kape her away!’ Pat shouted out in a minute or two after the cap’en had come on deck ‘The top of the berg is loosenin’, yer honour; and sure it’s falling on us it will be in a brace of shakes! Kape her away, or, be jabers, it’s lost we’ll be for sartin!’
“The old brig, although she wouldn’t come up to the wind when we wanted her, and thus saved our lives by disobeying orders, now answered her helm promptly without any demur, and dashed away from the mass of ice before the gale at, I should be ashamed to say what speed.
“Bless the old Cranky Jane! How could we ever have reviled her and despised her? She seemed almost as if she had human intelligence and a kind of foresight.
“We only just weathered the berg when the summit toppled over with a crash, missing the after-part of the brig by a very few yards, and churning up the sea far around with a sort of creamy surf, that dashed over our decks, and swept us fore and aft.
“It was a marvellous escape, and only second to that we had just before had in avoiding running on to the same gigantic mass of floating ice, which had probably come up from the Antarctic regions for the summer season—at least, that was Pat O’Brien’s explanation for our meeting with it there.