austing toil; and those who
have passed through the violence of the storm and done battle with its
dangers are, by the physical rest which they enjoy after it is over, the
more fitted to appreciate and sympathise with the repose which reigns
around them.

When the sun rose, on the morning after the storm, it shone upon a scene
so calm and beautiful, so utterly unconnected with anything like the sin
of a fallen world, and so typical, in its deep tranquillity, of the mind
of Him who created it, that it seemed almost possible for a moment to
fancy that the promised land was gained at last, and that all the dark
clouds, the storms and dangers, the weary journeyings and the troubles
of the wilderness, were past and gone for ever. So glorious was the
scene that when Edith, rising from her rude couch and stepping over the
prostrate forms of her still slumbering companions, issued from the
shelter of the canoe and cast her eyes abroad upon the glassy sea, she
could not restrain her feelings, and uttered a thrilling shout of joy
that floated over the waters and reverberated among the glittering crags
of the surrounding icebergs.

The island on which the travellers had been cast was a mere knoll of
sand, not more than a few hundred yards in circumference, that scarcely
raised its rounded summit above the level of the water, and at full tide
was reduced to a mere speck, utterly destitute of vegetation. The sea
around it was now smooth and clear as glass, though undulated by a long,
regular swell, which rolled, at slow, solemn intervals, in majestic
waves towards the sand-bank, where they hovered for a moment in curved
walls of dark-green water, then, lipping over, at their crests, fell in
a roar of foam that hissed a deep sigh on the pebbles of the beach, and
left the silence greater than before. Masses of ice floated here and
there on the surface of the deep, the edges and fantastic points of
which were tipped with light. Not far from the northern extremity of
the sand-bank a large iceberg had grounded, from the sides of which
several pinnacles had been hurled by the shock and now lay stranded on
the beach.

The shout with which Edith had welcomed the morning roused the whole
party, and in a few minutes they were all assembled outside of their
little hut, some admiring the scene, others--of a less enthusiastic and
more practical turn--examining the circumstances of their position, and
considering the best course that shoul