the fog cleared off, owing to a
marked fall in the temperature. We had no longer to do with
completely frozen vapour, but had to deal with the phenomenon called
frost-rime, which often occurs in these high latitudes. Captain Len
Guy recognized it by the quantity of prismatic threads, the point
following the wind which roughened the light ice-crust deposited on
the sides ot the iceberg. Navigators know better than to confound
this frost-rime with the hoar frost of the temperate zones, which
only freezes when it has been deposited on the surface of the soil.

We were now enabled to estimate the size of the solid mass on which
we clustered like flies on a sugar-loaf, and the schooner, seen from
below, looked no bigger than the yawl of a trading vessel.

This iceberg of between three and four hundred fathoms in
circumference measured from 130 to 140 feet high. According to all
calculations, therefore, its depth would be four or five times
greater, and it would consequently weigh millions of tons.

This is what had happened:

The iceberg, having been melted away at its base by contact with
warmer waters, had risen little by little; its centre of gravity had
become displaced, and its equilibrium could only be re-established
by a sudden capsize, which had lifted up the part that had been
underneath above the sea-level. The _Halbrane_, caught in this
movement, was hoisted as by an enormous lever. Numbers of icebergs
capsize thus on the polar seas, and form one of the greatest dangers
to which approaching vessels are exposed.

Our schooner was caught in a hollow on the west side of the iceberg.
She listed to starboard with her stern raised and her bow lowered.
We could not help thinking that the slightest shake would cause her
to slide along the slope of the iceberg into the sea. The collision
had been so violent as to stave in some of the planks of her hull.
After the first collision, the galley situated before the fore-mast
had broken its fastenings. The door between Captain Len Guy's and
the mate's cabins was torn away from the hinges. The topmast and
the topgallant-mast had come down after the back-stays parted, and
fresh fractures could plainly be seen as high as the cap of the
masthead.

Fragments of all kinds, yards, spars, a part of the sails, breakers,
cases, hen-coops, were probably floating at the foot of the mass and
drifting with it.

The most alarming part of our situation was the fact that of the two
boa