e fabric no hurt; but often forced
to slide perilously close by the bergs. I needed twenty instead of one
pair of eyes. With ice already on either bow, on a sudden it would
glimmer out right ahead, and I had to form my resolution on the instant.
If ever you have been amid a pack of icebergs on a dark night in a high
sea you will understand my case; if not, the pen of a Fielding or a
Defoe could not put it before you. For what magic has ink to express the
roaring of swollen waters bursting into tall pale clouds against the
motionless crystal heights, the mystery of the configuration of the
faintness under the swarming shadows of the flying night, the sudden
glares of breaking liquid peaks, the palpitating darkness beyond, the
plunging and rolling of the ship, making her rigging ring upon the air
with the reeling of her masts, the gradual absorption of the solid mass
of dim lustre by the gloom astern, the swift spectral dawn of such
another light over the bows, with many phantasmal outlines slipping by
on either hand, like a procession of giant ocean-spectres, travelling
white and secretly towards the silent dominions of the Pole?

Half this ice came from the island, the rest of it was formed of bergs
too tall to have ever belonged to the north end of that great stretch.
It took three hours to pass clear of them, and then I had to go on
clinging to the tiller and steering in a most melancholy famished
condition for another long half-hour before I could satisfy myself that
the sea was free.

But now I was nearly dead with the cold. I had stood for five hours at
the helm, during all which time my mind had been wound up to the
fiercest tension of anxiety, and my eyes felt as if they were strained
out of their sockets by their searching of the gloom ahead, and nature
having done her best gave out suddenly, and not to have saved my life
could I have stood at the tiller for another ten minutes.

The gear along the rail was so iron-hard that I could not secure the
helm with it, so I softened some lashings by holding them before the
fire, and finding the schooner on my return to be coming round to
starboard, I helped her by putting the tiller hard a port and securing
it. I then went below, built up the fire, lighted my pipe, and sat down
for warmth and rest.

CHAPTER XXVI.

I AM TROUBLED BY THOUGHTS OF THE TREASURE.

The weight of the wind in the rigging steadied the schooner somewhat,
and prevented her from rollin