It was Captain Braceworth himself who jumped to the engine-room telegraph and signaled:
“Full speed astern!”
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE COLLISION.
At the same instant a voice boomed out from the fore-peak:
“Something dead ahead, sir!”
And then the next moment a heart-chilling hail from the crow’s nest:
“Ice ahead! A big berg right under our bow!”
Jack leaped from his instruments, a nameless dread clutching at his heart. There had been no impact as yet, but he did not know at what instant there might come a crashing blow that would tear the stout steel plates of the tanker open as if they had been so much cardboard.