RAMMING AN ICEBERG
Unseen, the Independencia crossed athwart the great Atlantic highway without incident. No liner, or even a tramp, fell into her clutches, and for forty-eight hours after witnessing from afar the encounter betwixt the British and French cruisers, she pursued her way without let or hindrance, with ne'er a vessel to chase or to be chased by.
At length she approached the southern limit of Arctic ice, where the cold current from off the west coast of Greenland, bringing down with it the mighty output of inexhaustible glaciers, meets the warmer waters of the Atlantic. Here it was that the pirate-cruiser ran into a belt of fog, so dense that from the fore-bridge the fo'c'sle appeared to terminate at the foremost turret, while the temperature was so low that the moisture-laden atmosphere froze and hung from all parts of the masts and deck like gigantic stalactites.
Speed was reduced to seven and a half knots, and for the time being the keenest look-out was kept by the unacclimatised seamen. But, as Fielding had surmised, the numbing cold made their energies dormant, and before many hours had passed the majority of the pirates were perfectly indifferent to the dangers that threatened them.
As far as the chart showed, the Independencia was in open water, and well out of the track of steamers plying between Canada and Great Britain, and as the hours slowly passed without anything untoward happening, Cervillo, anxious to get clear of the fog-bank, ordered speed to be increased to twelve knots. The sooner he drew clear of the blinding atmosphere of frozen mist the better it would be.
Not one of the look-outs noticed a large "growler," or mass of almost submerged ice, which the cruiser passed at a distance of less than fifty feet to starboard; not one of them heard the breaking of the vessel's "wash" upon the fringe of the ice-field. Blindly unconscious to their danger the pirates drove ahead with the primary object of getting out of the fog as soon as possible.
Suddenly one of the look-out men stationed right in the bows gave vent to a shriek of horror, rather than a shout of warning. Looming distortedly through the fog, its summit lost in the murk, was a huge iceberg, already on the point of capsizing. Vicious little waves, caused by the rocking of the mass of unstable ice, lapped the visible base of the floating mountain. A practised seaman would have known by the agitation of the hitherto calm water and by the sudden drop in the temperature that an iceberg was nigh, and would have taken precautions accordingly; but the warning passed unheeded, and the Independencia crashed bows on upon the rampart of ice.
The impact threw nearly everyone on board. For a few seconds all were quiet, stunned by the calamity; then pandemonium broke loose. Yelling, shouting, and crying, the pirates rushed for the boats, their officers leading the way. There was no one to give orders to the engine-room, and the propellers were still driving ahead, pushing the shattered bows of the cruiser deeper into the fissure caused by the impact in the side of the berg. Those of the engineers and stokers who had been not rendered insensible by the concussion deserted their post, rushed on deck, and, heedless of the sudden change from the heated engine-room and stokeholds to the freezing, fog-laden air, joined their comrades in their mad skelter for the boats.
Even in their frenzy the pirates were cowed by the angry waters that were visible to their limited range of vision. Between the sides of the cruiser and the gulf of ice into which she had thrown herself was a vast cauldron of surging foam mingled with masses of ice that had slipped from the dizzy heights above. No boat could live in such a sea; it would either be swamped or crushed betwixt the heavy lumps of ice that, rising and falling, outrivalled the dreaded Scylla and Charybdis a thousand-fold.