as
if some one had used a piece of broken looking-glass to shoot the rays
into my eyes. And then there's a sort of queer mist hanging about that
thing in the bargain, so that sometimes it's almost blotted out. What
under the sun can it be?"

"I think I can give a guess," Tom called back. "How would an iceberg fill
the bill, Colin?"

"Just the thing, I'd say," the lieutenant answered, "only who ever heard
of an iceberg floating down in mid-Atlantic at this season of the year?
Such a thing would be uncommon, to say the least."

"But not impossible?" ventured Tom, to which the other agreed.

"Take a look, and tell us, Colin," urged Jack, offering the glasses.

A minute afterwards they were handed bade again.

"Just what it is, Tom, after all," reported Beverly. "A pretty tall berg
it seems to be, with an extensive ice-floe around it as level in spots as
a floor. I thought I saw something move on it that might be a Polar bear,
caught when the berg broke away from its Arctic glacier. We will pass
directly over, and may be able to feel the chill."

"It was the _Titanic_, wasn't it, that bumped into an iceberg, and went
down with such a frightful loss of life?" remarked Jack.

"No other," replied Tom. "But we'll try to make sure nothing like that
happens to our frail craft. Try to guess what would happen to that
monster berg if we hit head on?"

"Hardly a crack!" Jack retorted. "But I'm more interested in wondering
what would become of us. Guess we'd better keep a good thousand feet up,
and not bother trying to pry into the ice-floe's secrets."

"I'm not dreaming of dropping a foot lower just at present," Tom said
decisively; and not one of them dreamed how soon that decision would have
to be reversed, since all still looked fair about them, with no storm in
sight and the wonderful motors kept up their regular pulsations as if
capable of going on forever.

Yet strange vicissitudes and changes are the portion of those who
follow the sea; which may also be applied to other voyagers of space,
the sailors of the air. One minute all seems fair, with the sun
shining; another, and a white squall is dashing down upon the ship, to
catch the crew unawares and perhaps smother them with its mighty
foam-crested billows.

It was not half an hour later when something happened that was calculated
to chill the hearts of those bold navigators, such as even close contact
to the ice-floe and berg could never bring about.

At the t