in those high latitudes!

Was this dream suddenly interrupted, or was it changed by a freak of
my brain? I cannot tell, but I felt as though I had been suddenly
awakened. It seemed as though a change had taken place in the motion
of the schooner, which was sliding along on the surface of the quiet
sea, with a slight list to starboard. And yet, there was neither
rolling nor pitching. Yes, I felt myself carried off as though my
bunk were the car of an air-balloon. I was not mistaken, and I had
fallen from dreamland into reality.

Crash succeeded crash overhead. I could not account for them. Inside
my cabin the partitions deviated from the vertical in such a way as
to make one believe that the _Halbrane_ had fallen over on her beam
ends. Almost immediately, I was thrown out of my bunk and barely
escaped splitting my skull against the corner of the table. However,
I got up again, and, clinging on to the edge of the door frame, I
propped myself against the door.

At this instant the bulwarks began to crack and the port side of the
ship was torn open.

Could there have been a collision between the schooner and one of
those gigantic floating masses which West was unable to avoid in the
mist?

Suddenly loud shouts came from the after-deck, and then screams of
terror, in which the maddened voices of the crew joined.

At length there came a final crash, and the _Halbrane_ remained
motionless.

I had to crawl along the floor to reach the door and gain the deck.
Captain Len Guy having already left his cabin, dragged himself on
his knees, so great was the list to port, and caught on as best he
could.

In the fore part of the ship, between the forecastle and the
fore-mast, many heads appeared.

Dirk Peters, Hardy, Martin Holt and Endicott, the latter with his
black face quite vacant, were clinging to the starboard shrouds.

A man came creeping up to me, because the slope of the deck
prevented him from holding himself upright: it was Hurliguerly,
working himself along with his hands like a top-man on a yard.

Stretched out at full length, my feet propped up against the jamb of
the door, I held out my hand to the boatswain, and helped him, not
without difficulty, to hoist himself up near me.

"What is wrong?" I asked. "A stranding, Mr. Jeorling."

"We are ashore!"

"A shore presupposes land," replied the boatswain ironically,
"and so far as land goes there was never any except in that rascal
Dirk Peters' imaginatio