scoverers. It was pretty
to see with what discretion we approached and circled round it,
searching for the most favorable point of attack. So much of an iceberg
is beneath the surface of the water, ballasting the whole, that it is
rather ticklish business cruising in its vicinity. We lay off and on,
coquetting with the little beauty, while one of our boats pulled up to
it, and threw a lariat over a glittering peak that flamed in the sun
like a torch. Then we drew in the slack and made fast, while a half
dozen of our men mounted the slippery mass, armed with ropes and axes,
and began to hack off big chunks, which were in due season transferred
to our iceboxes.

Our iceberg was about fifty feet in length and twenty or thirty feet out
of the water. It was a glittering island, with savage peaks, deep
valleys, bluffs, and promontories. The edges were delicately frilled and
resembled silver filigree. Some of these, which were transparent and as
daintily turned as old Venetian glass, dripped continually like
rain-beaten eaves. The portion nearest the water's edge was honeycombed
by the wavelets that dashed upon it without ceasing, rushing in and out
of the small, luminous caverns in swift, sparkling rivulets. Much of the
surface was crusted with a fine frosting; it was full of wells deep
enough to sink a man in. These wells were filled with water, and with a
blue light, celestial in its loveliness,--a light ethereal and pellucid.
It was as if the whole iceberg were saturated with transfused moonbeams,
that gave forth a mellow radiance, which flashed at times like
brilliants, and burst into flame and played like lightning along the
almost invisible rims and ridges. The unspeakable, the incomprehensible
light throbbed through and through; and was sometimes bluish green and
sometimes greenish blue; but oftenest with the one was the other, both
at once, and with a perfectly bewildering tint added,--in a word, it was
frozen moonlight and no mistake. O my friend, I assure you there are
many famous sports with not half the fun in them that there is in
lassoing an iceberg!

Once more I turn to my note-books. I find that the morning had been
foggy; that we could see scarcely a ship's length ahead of us; that the
water was like oil beneath and the mists like snow above and about,
while we groped blindly. Of course we could not press forward under the
circumstances; for we were surrounded by islands great and small, and
any one of thes