I sympathized too much with him to answer otherwise than by laying my weight upon the oars, and pushing silently past. The water in this bit of bay was some six or eight feet deep, and the ice beneath it—for the berg was all solid below—showed in perfection that crystalline tawny green which belongs to it under such circumstances. I pulled around the curving rear of the eastern church, with its surface of marble lace, such as we had seen before, gazing upward and upward at the towering awfulness and magnificence of edifice, myself frozen in admiration. The Parson, under high excitement, rained his hortative oratory upon me.
"Nearer! Nearer! Let's touch it! Let's lay our hands upon it! Don't be faint-hearted now. It's now or never!"
I heard him as one under the influence of chloroform hears his attendants. He exhorted a stone. His words only seemed to beat and flutter faintly against me, like storm-driven birds against a cliff at night. My brain was only in my eyeballs; and the arms that worked mechanically at the oars belonged rather to the boat than to me.
Saturated at last, if not satiated, with seeing, I glanced at the water-level, and said,—
"But see how the surge is heaving against it!"
But now it was I that spoke to stone, though not to a silent one.
"Hang the surge! I'm here for an iceberg, not to be balked by a bit of surf! It's not enough to see; I must have my hand on it! I wish to touch the veritable North Pole!"
It was pleasant to see the ever-genial Parson so peremptory; and I lingered half wilfully, not unwilling to mingle the relieving flavor of this pleasure with the more awful delight of other impressions: said, however, at length,—
"I intend to go up to it, when I have found a suitable place."
"Place! What better place do you desire than this?"