, which furiously flooded her forecastle and
came washing aft like milk in the darkness till it was up to our knees.

"See there!" suddenly roared the carpenter.

"Where, man, where?" bawled the captain.

But in this brief time my sight had grown used to the night, and I saw
the object before the carpenter could answer. It lay on our lee beam,
but how far off no man could have told in that black thickness. It stood
against the darkness and hung out a dim complexion of light, or rather
of pallidness, that was not light--not to be described by the pen. It
was like a small hill of snow, and looked as snow does or the foam of
the sea in darkness, and it came and went with our soaring and sinking.

"Ice!" I shouted to the captain.

"I see it!" he answered, in a voice that satisfied me the consternation
he was under had settled the fumes of the spirits out of his head. "We
must drive her clear at all risks."

There was no need to call the men. To the second cry that had been
raised by one among them who had come out of the forecastle and seen the
berg, they had tumbled up as sailors will when they jump for their
lives; and now they came staggering, splashing, crawling aft to us, for
the lamp in the cabin made a sheen in the companion hatch, and they
could see us as we stood there.

"Men," cried Captain Rosy, "yonder's a gravestone for our carcases if we
are not lively! Cast the helm adrift!" (we steered by a tiller). "Two
hands stand by it. Forward, some of ye, and loose the stay-foresail, and
show the head of it."

The fellows hung in the wind. I could not wonder. The bowsprit had been
sprung when the jibboom was wrenched from the cap by the fall of the
top-gallant-mast; it still had to bear the weight of the heavy spritsail
yard, and the drag of the staysail might carry the spar overboard with
the men upon it. Yet it was our best chance; the one sail most speedily
released and hoisted, the one that would pay the brig's head off
quickest, and the only fragment that promised to stand.

"Jump!" roared the captain, in a passion of hurry. "Great thunder! 'tis
close aboard! You'll leave me no sea room for veering if you delay an
instant."

"Follow me who will!" I cried out; "and others stand by ready to hoist
away."

Thus speaking--for there seemed to my mind a surer promise of death in
hesitation at this supreme moment than in twenty such risks as laying
out on the bowsprit signified--I made for the lee of the weath