For my part, it was all ice to me--one dense, yelling
atmosphere of snow; every flake barbed, and the cold of a bitterness
beyond words. He fell a-sniffing again, quickly and vehemently, and
stepped to the side, sending a thirsty look into the white blindness
ahead, whilst I heard him mutter, "There 's ice close aboard, there 's
ice close aboard!" As he spoke the words, there arose a loud and
fearful cry from the forecastle.
"Ice right ahead, sir!"
"Ice right ahead, sir!" repeated the chief mate, whipping round upon
the captain.
"I see it, sir! I see it, sir!" roared the skipper. "Hard a
starboard, men! Hard a starboard for your lives! Over with it!"
The two fellows at the helm sent the spokes flying like the
driving-wheel of a locomotive; the long ship, upborne at the instant
by a huge Pacific sea, paid off like a creature of instinct, sweeping
slowly but surely to port just in time. For right on the starboard bow
of us there leapt out into proportions terrible and magnificent, within
a musket shot of our rail, an iceberg that looked as big as St. Paul's
Cathedral, with stormy roaring of the gale in its ravines and valleys,
and the white smoke of the snow revolving about its pinnacles and
spires like volumes of steam, and a volcanic noise of mighty seas
bursting against its base and recoiling from the adamant of its
crystalline sides in acres of foam.
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