running, the tall seas chasing her high stern and floating it
upwards, till looking forward was like gazing down the slope of a hill.

My heart was never fuller than then. I was half crazy with the passion
of joy that possessed me. Consider the alternations of hope and bitter
despair which had been crowded into that night! We may wonder in times
of security that life should be sweet, and admit the justice of the
arguments which several sorts of writers, and the poets even more than
the parsons, use in defence of death. But when it comes to the pinch
human nature breaks through. When the old man in AEsop calls upon Death
to relieve him, and the skeleton suddenly rises, the old man changes his
mind, and thinks he will go on trying for himself a little longer. I
liked to live, and had no mind for a wet shroud, and this getting the
schooner before the wind, along with the old familiar feeling of the
decks reeling and soaring and sinking under my feet, was so cordial an
assurance of life that, I tell you, my heart was full to breaking with
transport.

However, I was still in a situation that made prodigious demands upon my
coolness and wits. The wind was south-west, the schooner was running
north-east; the bulk of the icebergs lay on the larboard bow, but there
were others right ahead, and to starboard, where also lay the extremity
of the island, though I did not fear _that_ if I could escape the rest.
It was a dark night; methinks there should have been a young moon
curled somewhere among the stars, but she was not to be seen. The clouds
flew dark and hurriedly, and the frosty orbs between were too few to
throw a light. The ocean ahead and around was the duskier for the
spectral illumination of the near foam and the glimmer of the ice-coated
ship. I tested the vessel with the tiller and found she responded but
dully; she would be nimbler under canvas no doubt, but it was enough
that she should answer her helm at all. Oh, I say, I was mighty
thankful, most humbly grateful. My heart was never more honest to its
Maker than then.

She crushed along, pitching pitifully, the dark seas on either hand
foaming to her quarters, and her rigging querulous with the wind. Had
the Frenchman been alive to steer the ship, I might have found strength
enough for my hands in the vigour of my spirit to get the spritsail yard
square and chop its canvas loose--nay, I might have achieved more than
that even; but I could not quit the tiller now.