“Starboard, sir,” repeated the quartermaster and the second officer.
“Stead-a-a-ay!”
“Steady, sir!”
“Port a bit!”
And so it went on, as the Queen dodged now this way, now that, under the direction of the best pilot and captain on the dangerous Alaskan coast.
It did not take long, you may be sure, for the girls to finish their toilet and rush out on deck to see the fun. One by one the passengers joined them, wrapped in all sorts of heavy ulsters and coats. The air was like that of mid-winter, and the wind blew sharply.
The Queen steamed up as near as the captain dared, and there, about an eighth of a mile distant from the head of the bay, she waited.
Now, indeed, was discovered the true nature of that line of marble cliffs. They were of solid ice, rising to the awful height of three hundred feet above the fretted sea, and stretching across the bay in a mighty wall.
As the passengers gathered, shivering, on the forward deck, and gazed at this wonderful ice-river—the great Muir Glacier of Alaska—some one gave a sudden cry, and pointed to an ice pinnacle just abreast the ship. With a majestic movement the huge mass of glittering ice, larger than a church building, loosened itself from the cliff, and with a crash like thunder, plunged into the sea. A few moments later and the staunch ocean steamer rocked like a little boat on the waves made by the falling berg.