ous margins were being ground to pieces by the
enormous pressure, and the splintered fragments heaped up one above
another in the wildest confusion, to a height of from fifty to eighty
feet above the surface of the floe. The ice, which was about fifteen
feet thick, crumbled away like fragile glass, and it was only by
observing the manner in which masses weighing hundreds of tons were
wildly tossed hither and thither like corks that even an approximate
idea of the tremendous power at work could be obtained.

A mile ahead another grand sight presented itself. The northern and
larger of the two floes, acted strongly upon by the gale, and opposed by
the smaller floe, was slowly but irresistibly swinging round, and in its
sweep it had come into contact with a very large berg, which, influenced
apparently by some undercurrent, was with equally irresistible force
actually making its way to windward in the teeth of the gale. The
result was a scene of wild chaos and confusion and destruction compared
with which that upon which they had just looked was as nothing. The
berg simply tore its way through the floe as a plough does through a
furrow, splitting up the thick ice before it, and tossing the huge
fragments hither and thither until its path through the field was marked
by a black band of open water churned into fleecy froth by the breath of
the tempest, and bordered on either side by an immense wall of ice-
blocks, each of which constituted a small berg in itself.

The cold had by this time so increased in intensity that the colonel and
the baronet were only too glad to abandon their posts, now that there
was no further necessity for maintaining them, and retreat to the
friendly shelter of the pilot-house, where they lost no time in closing
themselves in.

CHAPTER NINE.

AN EXCITING ADVENTURE AND A RESCUE.

It was at this moment that Mildmay caught a momentary glimpse of an
object far away on the northern horizon, which his practised eye at once
told him was a sail of some sort. He instantly seized one of the
telescopes suspended in the pilot-house, and brought the instrument to
bear in her direction. For nearly a minute he was unsuccessful in his
endeavour to find her; but at length she reappeared from behind an
intervening berg; and it appeared to him that she was in a situation of
considerable peril. She was a barque, under close-reefed topsails,
reefed courses, fore topmast staysail, and mizzen; and she ap