ll,
crunching sound as the schooner fell off sidewise.

"Stand by those pike-poles!" shouted the captain; for so near was the
iceberg, that we could easily reach it with a ten-foot pole from the
bulwarks.

Striking the iron spikes into the ice, the men held the schooner off
while she drifted past. The rumbling noise, louder than before, seemed
now to come from out the solid berg.

"Let's get away from this before it splits or explodes again!"
exclaimed Raed.

"Heavens! it sounds like a big grist-mill in full blast!" said Kit.

"More like a powder-mill, I should judge from the blasts we heard a
few minutes ago," remarked Wade.

More poles were brought up, and we all lent a hand to push off from
our dangerous neighbor. After fending along its massy side for several
hundred yards, we got off clear from an angle.

"Farewell, old thunder-mill!" laughed Kit.

But we had not got clear of it so easily: for the vast lofty mass so
broke off the wind and storm, that, immediately on passing it to the
leeward, we hadn't a "breath of air;" and, as a consequence, the berg
soon drifted down upon us. Again we pushed off from it, and set the
fore-sail. The sail merely flapped occasionally, and hung idly; and
again the iceberg came grinding against us. There were no means of
getting off, save to let down the boat, and tow the schooner out into
the wind,--rather a ticklish job among ice, and in so dim a light.
"The Curlew" lay broadside against the berg, but did not seem to chafe
or batter much: on the contrary, we were borne along by the ice with
far less motion than if out in open water.

"Well, why not let her go so?" said Kit after we had lain thus a few
minutes. "There doesn't seem to be any great danger in it. This side
of the iceberg, so far as I can make it out, doesn't look very
dangerous."

"Not a very seamanlike way of doing business," remarked the captain,
looking dubiously around.

"Catching a ride on an iceberg," laughed Weymouth. "That sort of thing
used to be strictly forbidden at school."

"But only listen to that fearful rumble and roar!" said Raed. "It
seems to come from deep down in the berg. What is it?"

"Must be the sea rushing through some crack, or possibly the
rain-water and the water from the melted ice on top streaming down
through some hole into the sea," said the captain.

"But those explosions!--how would you account for those?" asked Wade.

"Well, I can't pretend to explain that. I have a