t as he had imagined it, a thing of
sparkling minarets and pinnacles, but a hill of snow that materialized
in the soft darkness and floated off again to dissolution like the ghost
of an island, leaving behind the bitter chill of death, rising and
falling until, in a moment, it was gone, with its threat of shipwreck
had the night been less clear.

Five times before eight bells the cry came from forward, and the heaps
of shining whiteness would take form, gather a certain sharpness of
outline, and go past the beam with the seas surging about them and
breaking with a hollow boom upon their cavernous sides. And this was in
the open sea. Lund had suggested that the strait would be full of ice.
Rainey felt his sailing experience, that he came to be rather proud of,
pitifully limited and inadequate in the face of coming conditions.

When he turned in at last, despite his determination to follow Lund's
admonition concerning sleep, it would not come to him. Hansen had taken
over the deck stolidly enough, with no show of misgivings as to his
ability to handle things, but his words had not been cheering to Rainey.

"Plenty ice from now on, Mr. Rainey. Now we bane goin' to have one hard
yob on our hands, by yiminy, you an' me!"

CHAPTER IX

THE POT SIMMERS

Rainey was awakened at half past seven by the swift rush of men on deck
and a confused shouting. The sun was shining brightly through his
porthole and then it became suddenly obscured. He looked out and saw a
turreted mass of ice not half a cable's length away from the schooner,
water cascading all over its hills and valleys, that were distinct
enough, but so smoothed that the truth flashed over him. Here was a berg
that had suddenly turned turtle and exposed its greater, under-water
bulk to the air.

About it the sea was dark and vivid blue, and the berg sparkled in the
sun with prismatic reflections that gave all the hues of the rainbow to
its prominences, while the bulk glowed like a fire opal. Between it and
the schooner the sea ran in a lasher of diminishing turmoil. Hansen had
carelessly sailed too close. The momentum of the _Karluk_ and its slight
wave disturbance must have sufficed to upset the equilibrium of the
berg, floating with only a third of its bulk above the water. And the
displacement had narrowly missed the schooner's side.

He got a cup of coffee after dressing warmly, and went up. Carlsen and
the girl had preceded him and were gazing at the