vantage of every favourable circumstance; at midnight he
had got beyond the sixty-sixth parallel, and the fathom line declared
twenty-three fathoms of water; Shandon discovered that he was on the
shoal where Her Majesty's ship _Victoria_ struck, and that land was
drawing near, thirty miles to the east. But now the heaps of ice,
which up till now had been motionless, divided and began to move;
icebergs seemed coming from every point of the horizon; the brig was
entangled in a series of moving rocks, the crushing force of which
it was impossible to resist. Moving became so difficult that Garry,
the best helmsman, took the wheel; the mountains had a tendency to
close up behind the brig; it then became essential to cut through
the floating ice, and prudence as well as duty ordered them to go
ahead. Difficulties became greater from the impossibility that
Shandon found in establishing the direction of the vessel amongst
such changing points, which kept moving without offering one firm
perspective. The crew was divided into two tacks, larboard and
starboard; each one, armed with a long perch with an iron point, drove
back the two threatening blocks. Soon the _Forward_ entered into a
pass so narrow, between two high blocks, that the extremity of her
yards struck against the walls, hard as rock; by degrees she entangled
herself in the midst of a winding valley, filled up with eddies of
snow, whilst the floating ice was crashing and splitting with sinister
cracklings. But it soon became certain that there was no egress from
this gullet. An enormous block, caught in the channel, was driving
rapidly on to the _Forward_! It seemed impossible to avoid it, and
equally impossible to back out along a road already obstructed.

Shandon and Johnson, standing on the prow, were contemplating the
position. Shandon was pointing with his right hand at the direction
the helmsman was to take, and with his left was conveying to James
Wall, posted near the engineer, his orders for the working of the
machine.

"How will this end?" asked the doctor of Johnson.

"As it may please God," replied the boatswain.

The block of ice, at least a hundred feet high, was only about a cable's
length from the _Forward_, and threatened to pound her under it.

"Cursed luck!" exclaimed Pen, swearing frightfully.

"Silence!" exclaimed a voice which it was impossible to recognise
in the midst of the storm.

The block seemed to be precipitating itself upon the b