At this instant a heavy, near explosion boomed out, followed
momentarily by another and another.

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Raed.

"Cannon!" shouted Wade: "it's a vessel in distress!"

"Impossible!" cried the captain. "No ship would fire cannon here, even
if wrecked. There wouldn't be one chance in ten thousand of its being
heard by another vessel."

_Boom!_

"Hark! did you not hear that splashing noise that followed the
explosion?" demanded Kit.

We had all heard it; for, by this time, the sailors who were below had
come on deck. The heavy rumbling noise began afresh, and sounded
louder than before. We were completely mystified, and stood peering
off from the bulwarks into the stormy obscurity of the night.

"Are there volcanoes on these straits, suppose?" Wade asked.

No one had ever heard of any.

"There were none in my geography," said Raed. "But there may be one
_forming_."

Indeed, we were so much in doubt, that even this improbable suggestion
was caught at for the moment.

"But where's the fire and smoke?" replied Kit. "Methinks it ought to
be visible."

We could feel, rather than see, that the schooner was veering slowly
to the left, in obedience to her helm,--a fact which left no doubt
that we were, as the captain had surmised, drifting with the storm
against the current; or perhaps, before this, the tide coming in had
made a counter-current up the straits. The roaring noise was growing
more distinct every minute; till all at once Bonney, who was looking
attentively out from the bow, exclaimed,--

"What's that ahead, captain? Isn't there something?"

We all strained our eyes.

Dim amid the fog and rain something which seemed like a great pale
shadow loomed before the schooner. For a moment we gazed, uncertain
whether it were real, or an illusion of darkness; then Donovan
shouted,--

"Ice!--it's an iceberg!"

"Hard a-starboard!" yelled Capt. Mazard.

It was not a hundred feet distant. Old Trull and Bonney caught up the
pike-poles to fend off with. "The Curlew" drove on. The vast shadowy
shape seemed to approach. A chill came with it. A few seconds more,
and the bowsprit punched heavily against the ice-mountain. The shock
sent the schooner staggering back like a pugilist with a "blimmer"
between the eyes. Had we been sailing at our usual rate, it would have
stove in the whole bow. The storm immediately forced us forward again;
and the bowsprit, again striking, slid along the ice with a du