me; it seemed to me as if I was being carried right
up into the air, then I felt a shock, and it was sometime before I knew
anything more.

"When I came to myself it was daylight. For a bit I could not move, and
I thought my ribs were staved in; but at last, after much trouble, I
made a shift to work myself out and found that I was about fifty feet
above the water. The wave had carried me upon its crest as it swept up
the face of the berg, and just as it was at its highest had, by God's
mercy, jammed me in between two pinnacles of ice, and though I daresay
others had swept up as high, none of them had moved me. I sat for a time
dazed and stupid, and then began to take a view of my position. The ship
was gone. There was not a sign of a bit of floating timber or any of my
messmates. I suppose all the wreckage had been swept away by the
current.

"The iceberg had, I reckon, been floating a long time, for it was seamed
all over with cracks and crevices. It had been up under a pretty hot sun
before the long gale blew it and us south, and the surface was rough and
honey-combed. I did not feel as grateful as I ought to have done, lads,
that I had been cast up, for I saw nothing but death before me; and
thought that it would have been better to have died when I lost my
senses in the water than to have to die again as it were by cold or
hunger on the berg. However I set-to to climb over the berg and down to
the other side so as to get under its lee. It took me two or three hours
of hard work, but by the end of that time my clothes were dry, and I got
some spirit and hope in me again.

"Once over there I was pretty comfortable; the berg sheltered me from
the wind, and the sun began to shine out a bit through the clouds, and
in the afternoon, although it was still blowing hard, there was a blue
sky overhead. There were a good many other bergs in sight, but none of
them seemed near as big as the one that I was on. Fortunately I had a
couple of biscuits in my pocket, having thrust them in there when I ran
up when there was a call for an extra hand at the helm. One of these I
ate, then I lay down on a broad ledge and went off sound asleep. When I
awoke it was night. I was warmly clad when we struck, having my thick
oil-skin over my pea-jacket, but I felt a bit cold. However I was soon
off again, and when I awoke morning had broken. I ate half my last
biscuit, took a drink out of a pool--I do not know whether it was melted
ice or r