A VOYAGE IN THE NORTH SEAS* 259 



in the elements produce among the navigators of the northern seas. 

 The crews of ships are frequently obliged to remove their effects upon 

 the ice three or four times in twenty-four hours, expecting instant 

 destruction to their vessel, from the closing of the frozen masses ; and 

 every year furnishes the history of boats' companies, which, engaged 

 at a distance from the ship in the pursuit of the whale, have been 

 overtaken by the fogs and enclosed among floating ice-fields, and have 

 there perished by the destruction of their boats, or have died a more 

 lingering and dreadful death from hunger, amid the terrible ramparts 

 which form the walls of their prison. The fogs clear away, the wind 

 lulls, the ice opens, and yonder, w r ith his head downwards, and lashing 

 the ocean into foam with his enormous tail till vapours darken the air, 

 and the past tempest seems again returning, the leviathan of the deep is 

 sporting in his native element. Lower away the boats ! call all hands 

 for a loose fall ! Half naked the hardy mariners spring up from the 

 brief repose which they have enjoyed since the storm ; they bundle 

 their clothes into the boats, trusting to make their toilet on their way to 

 the object of pursuit, and jollily, as if death had never stared them in 

 the face, they give way with a will, cheered perhaps by the boat-steerer, 

 who croaks low some quaint sea-ditty, chorussed by the crew with 

 "pull away, gallant boys, pull away!" "Behold!" says Dionise 

 Little, when, after escaping the dangers of a dreadful tempest, Captain 

 Frobisher and his men reached the ship with a large store of the glit- 

 tering stone which was then thought to be a valuable gold ore, and 

 which threw the whole crew into raptures of joy " Behold the glory 

 of man ; to-night looking for death, to-morrow devising how to satisfy 

 his greedy appetite for gold." 



Flora, Arundel, and the smuggler reached the mouth of the inlet, 

 and saw the Labrador at about a league's distance from the land, still 

 made fast to the iceberg. The wind, which had brought them pretty 

 merrily down the inlet, had apparently driven the ice considerably to 

 seaward, carrying, of course, the ship along with it. Arundel was 

 just about to fire off his piece, in order to attract the attention of the 

 crew, and had directed Black Bill to make the usual signal of want- 

 ing assistance, when a squall of wind striking the huge lug sail, 

 caused the boat to dig its bow under the waves and ship a consider- 

 able quantity of water. " Had you not better lower away the sail, 

 and take a reef in it?" asked Frank, adjusting the clothes on which 

 Flora lay, so as to keep her dry. Bill answered by pointing to the 

 north-west quarter of the sky, where a grey line, like a distant fog- 

 bank, seemed to stretch across the horizon. " Keep her right before 

 it, Sir," said he, giving a pull at the halyards, " it is our only 

 chance. If the wind doesn't blow our canvas into ribbons, no hand 

 of mine shall strip a stitch off her ; we will be in the heart of the fog 

 in a quarter of an hour, and unless we are within hail of the Labrador 

 by that time, it's small help they will be able to give us in such a sea 

 of ice and foam as there will be up by that time." 



While the man spoke, Arundel kept his eye fixed upon the grey 

 line of mist which stretched with astonishing rapidity towards them, 

 and caused the atmosphere to fall suddenly in temperature, while the 

 moisture with which it became quickly charged settled in- the form 



