VIII.] LES MERS GLACIALES. 121 



dinner was announced, and I question if so sumptuous a 

 banquet has ever been served up before in that outlandish 

 part of the world, embellished as it was by selections from 

 the best operas played by the corps d'orchestre which had 

 accompanied the Prince from Paris. During the pauses of 

 the music the conversation naturally turned on the strange 

 lands we were about to visit, and the best mode of spiffli- 

 cating the white bears who were probably already shaking 

 in their snow shoes : but alas ! while we were in the very 

 act of exulting in our supremacy over these new domains, 

 the stiffened finger of the Ice king was tracing in frozen 

 characters a " Mene, mene, tekel upharsin " on the plate 

 glass of the cabin windows. During the last half-hour the 

 thermometer had been gradually falling, until it was nearly 

 down to 32 ; a dense penetrating fog enveloped both the 

 vessels — (the " Saxon" had long since dropped out of sight), 

 flakes of snow began floating slowly down, and a gelid 

 breeze from the north-west told too plainly that we had 

 reached the frontiers of the solid ice, though we were still 

 a good hundred miles distant from the American shore. 

 Although at any other time the terrible climate we had 

 dived into would have been very depressing, under present 

 circumstances I think the change rather tended to raise our 

 spirits, perhaps because the idea of fog and ice in the month 

 of June seemed so completely to uncockneyfy us. At all 

 events there was no doubt now we had got into les mers 

 glaciates, as our French friends called them, and, whatever 

 else might be in store for us, there was sure henceforth to 

 be no lack of novelty and excitement. 



By this time it was already well on in the evening, so 

 having agreed with Monsieur de la Ronciere on a code of 

 signals in case of fogs, and that a jack hoisted at the mizen 

 of the "Heine Hortense" or at the fore of the schooner, 

 should be an intimation of a desire of one or other to cast 

 oft*, we got into the boat and were dropped down alongside 

 our own ship. Ever since leaving Iceland the steamer had 

 been heading east-north-east by compass, but during the 



