APPALLING CALAMITIES TO WHALING VESSELS. 167 



Battler, of Leith, and dashed against them with such tre- 

 mendous fury, that these four noble vessels, which had 

 braved for years the tempests of the Polar seas, were in a 

 quarter of an hour shattered into fragments. The scene 

 was awful : the grinding noise of the ice, tearing open their 

 sides, and the masts breaking off and falling in every direc- 

 tion, were added to the cries of two hundred sailors, leaping 

 upon the frozen surface with only such portions of their 

 clothes as they could snatch in a single instant. The Battler 

 is said to have become the most complete wreck ever known. 

 She was literally turned inside out, and her stem and stern 

 carried to the distance of a gun-shot from each other ; and 

 the Achilles had her sides pressed together, and her stern 

 thrust out, and her decks and beams broken into innumerable 

 fragments. 



Such are some of the perils which have been related by 

 the hardy travelers of the ocean whose years have been 

 spent in continued struggles, not only with the element, 



" Boundless, endless, and sublime, 

 The image of eternity, — " 



but with the huge monarch of the waters, whose reign has 

 been disputed by a greater power in creation, who '* sees all 

 things for his use." 



•' Thou little knowest 

 What he can brave, who, bom and nurst 

 In Danger's paths, has dared her worst!" 



