74 
THE HIPPING S. 
under the frowning shore of Greenland, ten mile 
nearer the Pole than our holding-ground of the morn 
ing, the men have turned in to rest. 
“I was afraid to join them; for the gale was un 
broken, and the floes kept pressing heavily upon ouj 
berg,—at one time so heavily as to sway it on its ver¬ 
tical axis toward the shore, and make its pinnacle 
overhang our vessel. My poor fellows had but a pre¬ 
carious sleep before our little harbor was broken up. 
They hardly reached the deck, when we were driven 
astern, our rudder splintered, and the pintles torn 
from their boltings. 
“Now began the nippings. The first shock took us 
on our port-quarter; the brig bearing it well, and, after 
a moment of the old-fashioned suspense, rising by jerks 
handsomely. The next was from a veteran floe, 
tongued and honeycombed, but floating in a single 
table over twenty feet in thickness. Of course, no 
wood or iron could stand this; but the shoreward face 
of our iceberg happened to present an inclined plane, 
descending deep into the water; and up this the brig 
was driven, as if some great steam screw-power was 
forcing her into a dry dock. 
“At one time I expected to see her carried bodily 
up its face and tumbled over on her side. But one of 
those mysterious relaxations, which I have elsewhere 
called the pulses of the ice, lowered us quite gradually 
down again into the rubbish, and we were forced out 
of the line of pressure toward the shore. Here we 
succeeded in carrying out a warp, and making hist. 
