e sound.

The fearful grating noise ceased on a sudden, and the faintness of the
berg loomed upon the starboard bow. We had been hurled clear of it and
were to leeward; but what was our condition? I tried to shout again, but
to no purpose; and was in the act of quitting the tiller to go forward
when I was struck over the brows by something from aloft--a block, as I
believe--and fell senseless upon the deck.

CHAPTER III.

I LOSE MY COMPANIONS.

I lay for a long while insensible; and that I should have recovered my
mind instead of dying in that swoon I must ever account as the greatest
wonder of a life that has not been wanting in the marvellous. I had no
sooner sat up than all that had happened and my present situation
instantly came to me. My hair was stiff with ice; there was no more
feeling in my hands than had they been of stone; my clothes weighed upon
me like a suit of armour, so inflexibly hard were they frozen. Yet I got
upon my legs, and found that I could stand and walk, and that life
flowed warm in my veins, for all that I had been lying motionless for an
hour or more, laved by water that would have become ice had it been
still.

It was intensely dark; the binnacle lamp was extinguished, and the light
in the cabin burned too dimly to throw the faintest colour upon the
hatchway. One thing I quickly noticed, that the gale had broken and blew
no more than a fresh breeze. The sea still ran very high, but though
every surge continued to hurl its head of snow, and the heavens to
resemble ink from contrast with the passage, as it seemed, close under
them of these pallid bodies, there was less spite in its wash, less
fury in its blow. The multitudinous roaring of the heaving blackness had
sobered into a hard and sullen growling, a sound as of thunder among
mountains heard in a valley.

The brig pitched and rolled heavily. Much of the buoyancy of her earlier
dance was gone out of her. Nevertheless, I could not persuade myself
that this sluggishness was altogether due to the water she had taken in.
It was wonderful, however, that she should still be afloat. No man could
have heard the rending and grating of her side against the ice without
supposing that every plank in it was being torn out.

Finding that I had the use of my voice, I holloaed as loudly as I could,
but no human note responded. Three or four times I shouted, giving some
of the people their names, but in vain. Father of mercy! I thought, w