“The crew were briefly told that Captain Huddersfield’s wife had been aboard the Prairie Chief, and that the schooner was going to seek the survivors of the wreck. It will be supposed, however, that no hint was dropped as to the mysterious voice which had spoken in the whisper of a giant in the captain’s dream. Curzon, the second mate, said that apart from the heavy odds against our falling in with the particular iceberg we wanted, there was the certainty, should we strangely enough encounter the mass of ice, of our finding the people dead of cold and starvation. I answered there was no certainty about it, and quoted several instances of astonishing deliverances from floating bodies of ice as recorded in the old marine chronicles.
“Not until the fourth day did we strike the latitude of 50°, in which time we saw no ice. The ocean was of a marvellous rich blue, the heavens a deep and thrilling violet, with coasts of swelling white vapour of a rusty bronze in their brows lying upon the glass-like line of the horizon. We now headed due east; the sailors thought our quest was ended! Throughout the glittering frosty hours—the wind blew with a piercing breath down here—Captain Huddersfield kept a look-out. He was for ever crossing the deck to peer ahead, and again and again, slinging a binocular glass over his shoulder, he would go aloft on to the little fore-royal-yard, where he stayed till the bitter cold drove him down.
“At midnight on this day we sighted a large ice-island, pale as alabaster under the moon, and shortened canvas to approach it. We hove-to till the grey of the dawn, when the rising sun gave us a magnificent picture of a floating mountain bristling with pinnacles, a principality of turrets and castellated eminences, majestic in solitude. The man Dickens said it was not the berg. We sailed round it, keeping a sharp look-out for the loose ice, and then observing no signs of life, save a number of birds, proceeded.
“This same day we fell in with five different bergs, of various sizes, all of which we approached, and carefully examined; but to no purpose. Then for some long hours we encountered no more ice; but all this while we sailed steadily on the parallel of 50° S., making a due east course.
“And now comes the amazing part of this tale. I went on deck at midnight to take charge of the schooner. On walking to the side as my custom was, and gazing steadily ahead—a corner of the moon at this time hung in the sky over the port-quarter—I beheld a dim faintness right ahead, a delicate gleam like some mysterious reflection of light in a looking-glass in a darkened room. A man came along from the forecastle, and sung out in a quiet voice that there was ice ahead. I bade him rout out Dickens; it was his watch below, but whenever ice was reported we had him up, and stationed him on the forecastle to keep a look-out as the one and only man in the vessel who would know the berg we were in search of. I then ran to the companion hatch and called to the captain, who was lying upon a locker below, and he immediately arrived.
“The wind was scanty, and our speed through the water scarcely four knots, but hardly had day broken—the ice-island being then about a mile distant—when Dickens, who had remained on the forecastle throughout the dark hours, shrieked out—
“‘The iceberg, sir!’
“It was a fine morning, the sea quiet, the wind a nipping air out of the south-west; the sun shone full upon the iceberg, and flashed it into a great moon-white floating heap, scored with ravines and gorges. The swell rushed in thunder into deep caverns. I saw many Gothic archways with birds flying in them; the mass was like a city of alabaster, the home of sea spirits, of ocean fowl of mighty pinion; the surf boiled in thunder on the windward points. I observed a shelf of the dead-white crystal sloping very gently like a beach into the wash of the water, and whilst I was gazing at it the captain, who was working away at the berg with a telescope, cried out fiercely; then growing inarticulate, he put the glass into my hand, gaping at the ice, and pointing to it.
“I levelled the glass, and immediately distinguished a structure, contrived, as I presently saw, of the galley of a ship, and a quantity of wreckage. It stood in a great split in the ice, within musket-shot of the beach, and whilst I looked smoke rose from it.
“‘There is life there!’ I cried out.