IN THE ICE 



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greasy, dog-eared volumes were passed about 

 from ship to ship. Perhaps there were twenty 

 books aboard the brig which had been read by 

 almost every member of the crew, forward and 

 aft. Before we got out of the ice, we had ex- 

 changed these volumes for an entirely new lot 

 from other ships. 



One morning I awoke with the ship rocking 

 like a cradle. I pulled on my clothes and hur- 

 ried on deck. The ice fields were in wild commo- 

 tion. Great swells from some storm upon the 

 open sea to the south were rolling under them. 

 Crowded and tumultuous waves of ice twenty 

 feet high chased each other across the frozen 

 fields from horizon to horizon. The ship would 

 sink for a moment between ridges of ice and 

 snow, and then swing up on the crest of an ice 

 mountain. Great areas of ice would fall away 

 as if the sea had opened beneath them. Then 

 they would shoot up and shut out half the sky. 

 The broken and jagged edges of these white and 

 solid billows appeared for an instant like a range 

 of snowy sierras which, in another instant, would 

 crumble from view as if some seismic cataclysm 



