d hill, and the wind or the sea
having caused the body on which the schooner lay to veer, this wall
stood as a shield betwixt the vessel and the surges, and was now
receiving those blows which had heretofore struck her starboard side
amidships and filled her decks.

Oh for a wizard's inkhorn, that I might make you see the picture as I
view it now, even with the eye of memory! The posture of the little berg
pointed the schooner's head seawards, about west; the ice-terraces of
the island lay with the wild strange gleam of their own snow radiance
upon them upon the larboard quarter; around the schooner was the
whiteness of her frozen seat, and her outline was an inky, exquisitely
defined configuration upon it; above the crystal wall on the larboard
bow rose the spume of the breaking surge in pallid bodies, glancing for
an instant, and sometimes shaking a thunder into the ship when a portion
of the seething water was flung by the wind upon the forecastle deck; at
moments a larger sea than usual overran the ice on the larboard beam and
quarter, and boiled up round about the buttocks of the schooner. To
leeward the smooth backs of the billows rolled away in jet, but the
fitful throbbings and feeble flashings of froth commingled with the dim
shine of the ice were over all, tincturing the darkness with a spectral
sheen, giving to everything a quality of unearthliness that was
sharpened yet by the sounds of the wind in the gloom on high and the
hissing and foaming of waters sending their leagues-distant voices to
the ear upon the wings of the icy blast.

The wind, as I have said, blew from the south-west, but the trend of the
island-coast was north-east and as the mass of ice I was upon in parting
from the main had floated to a cable's length from the cliffs, there was
not much danger, whilst the wind and sea held, of the berg (if I may so
term it) being thrown upon the island. That the ice under the schooner
was moving, and if so, at what rate, it was too dark to enable me to
know by observing the marks on the coast. There was to be no sleep for
me that night, and knowing this, I stepped below and built up a good
fire, and then went with the lanthorn to see how Tassard did and to give
him the news; but he was in so deep a sleep, that after pulling him a
little without awakening him I let him lie, nothing but the sound of his
breathing persuading me that he had not lapsed into his old frozen state
again.

Of all long nights t