the air, their rugged sides rasping horribly
along the edges of the floe with an awful crushing, grinding sound, and
their contiguous sides approaching each other more and more nearly every
moment, there was not a man on either of those two vessels who did not
hold his breath and stand fascinated in awestricken suspense, gazing
upon those menacing walls of ice and waiting for the shock which should
be the herald of their destruction.

Rapidly--yet slower than a snail's pace, as it seemed to those anxious
men--the space narrowed between the bergs and the ships; the grinding
crash and crackle of the ice grew momentarily more loud and distracting;
the freezing wind from the bergs cut their faces like an invisible razor
as it swept down upon them in sudden powerful gusts, apparently intent
upon retarding their progress until the last hope of escape should be
cut off; the gigantic icy cliffs lowered more and more threateningly
down upon them; and at last, when the feeling of doubt and suspense was
at its highest, the _Flying Fish_ entered the gap. The channel had by
this time become so narrow that for the _Flying Fish_ to pass through it
seemed utterly impossible; indeed, it looked as though there remained
scarcely room for the barque with her much narrower beam; and as the
towering crystal walls closed in upon them every man present felt that
the final moment had now come. Everything depended upon Sir Reginald;
if at this critical instant his nerve failed him there was nothing but
quick destruction and a horrible death for every man there. But the
baronet's nerve did _not_ fail him. With a face pale and teeth clenched
with excitement, but with a steady pulse and an unquailing eye, he stood
with one hand on the tiller and the other on the engine lever, guiding
his ship exactly midway through the narrow gorge; and precisely at the
right moment, when the _Flying Fish's_ sides were actually grazing the
ice on either side, he increased the pressure of his hand upon the
lever, the engines revolved a shade more rapidly, and the flying ship
slid through the narrowest part of the pass uninjured, but escaping by
the merest hair's breadth.

But would the barque also get through? She was fully two hundred feet
astern of the _Flying Fish_, and the bergs were revolving on their own
centres in such a manner that ere many seconds were past they must
inevitably come together with a force which would literally annihilate
whatever migh