s? Was this death? All these questions flashed
through my mind in the fraction of a second, and a moment later I was
engaged in a life and death struggle. The ponderous monolith of ice sank
below the surface, and the frigid waters gurgled around me in frenzied
anger. I was in a saucer, with the waters pouring in on every side. A
moment more and I lost consciousness.

When I partially recovered my senses, and roused from the swoon of a
half-drowned man, I found myself wet, stiff, and almost frozen, lying on
the iceberg. But there was no sign of my father or of our little fishing
sloop. The monster berg had recovered itself, and, with its new balance,
lifted its head perhaps fifty feet above the waves. The top of this
island of ice was a plateau perhaps half an acre in extent.

I loved my father well, and was grief-stricken at the awfulness of his
death. I railed at fate, that I, too, had not been permitted to sleep
with him in the depths of the ocean. Finally, I climbed to my feet and
looked about me. The purple-domed sky above, the shoreless green ocean
beneath, and only an occasional iceberg discernible! My heart sank in
hopeless despair. I cautiously picked my way across the berg toward the
other side, hoping that our fishing craft had righted itself.

Dared I think it possible that my father still lived? It was but a ray
of hope that flamed up in my heart. But the anticipation warmed my blood
in my veins and started it rushing like some rare stimulant through
every fiber of my body.

I crept close to the precipitous side of the iceberg, and peered far
down, hoping, still hoping. Then I made a circle of the berg, scanning
every foot of the way, and thus I kept going around and around. One part
of my brain was certainly becoming maniacal, while the other part, I
believe, and do to this day, was perfectly rational.

I was conscious of having made the circuit a dozen times, and while one
part of my intelligence knew, in all reason, there was not a vestige of
hope, yet some strange fascinating aberration bewitched and compelled
me still to beguile myself with expectation. The other part of my brain
seemed to tell me that while there was no possibility of my father being
alive, yet, if I quit making the circuitous pilgrimage, if I paused for
a single moment, it would be acknowledgment of defeat, and, should I do
this, I felt that I should go mad. Thus, hour after hour I walked
around and around, afraid to stop and rest