and a wind that
increased until they began to hear the ice grinding and breaking up--
as it seemed--all around them. Snorri steered at first for the
southward, where had been open water; but by and by found that even here
were drifting bergs. He therefore put his helm down and felt his way
through the weather by short boards, and so, with the most of his men
stationed forward to keep a look-out, fenced, as it were, with the
danger, steering and tacking, until by God's grace the fog lifted, and
the wind blew gently once more.

And now in the clear sunshine he saw that the storm had been more
violent than any had supposed; since the wall of ice, which before had
been solid, was now burst and riven in many places, and in particular to
the eastward, where a broad path of water lay before them almost like a
canal, but winding here and there. Towards this Snorri steered, and
entered it with a fair breeze.

They had come, he said, but to the second bend of this waterway, when a
seaman, who had climbed the mast on the chance of spying an outlet,
called out in surprise that there was a ship ahead of them, but two
miles off, and running down the channel before the wind, even as they.
At first he found no credit for this tale, and even when those on deck
spied her mast and yard overtopping a gap between two bergs, they could
only set it down for a mirage or cheat of eyesight in the clear weather.

But by and by, said Snorri, they could not doubt they were in chase of a
ship, and, further, that they were fast overtaking her. For she steered
with no method, and shook with every slant of wind, and anon went off
before it like a helpless thing, until in the end she was fetched up by
the jutting foot of a berg, and there shook her sail, flapping with such
noise that Snorri's men heard it, though yet a mile away.

They bore down upon her, and now took note that this sail of hers was
ragged and frozen, so that it flapped like a jointed board, and that her
rigging hung in all ways and untended, but stiff with rime; and drawing
yet nearer, they saw an ice-line about her hull, so deep that her
timbers seemed bitten through, and a great pile of frozen snow upon her
poop, banked even above her tiller; but no helmsman, and no living soul
upon her.

Then Snorri let lower his boat, and was rowed towards her; and, coming
alongside, gave a hail, which was unanswered. But from the frozen pile
by the tiller there stuck out a man's arm, gh