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"Pooh! never heard of it," replied the pacha.

"I am surprised, your highness; I thought every body must have heard of
that adventurous navigator. I may here observe that I have since read
his voyages, and he mentions as a curious fact, the steam which was
emitted from the ice--which was nothing more than the hot air escaping
from my cave when it was cut through--a singular point, as it not only
proves the correctness of his remarks, but the circumstance of my having
been there, as I am now describing it to your highness."

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But, alas! my hopes soon vanished: the voices became more faint, I felt
that I was plunged under the floe to make room for the passage of the
ship, and when I rose, the water which had filled the incision made by
the saw, froze hard, and I was again closed in--perhaps for ever. I now
became quite frantic with despair, I tore my clothes, and dashed my head
against the corners of the cave, and tried to put an end to my hated
existence. At last, I sank down exhausted with my own violent efforts,
and continued sullen for several days.

But there is a buoyant spirit in our composition which raises our heads
above the waters of despair. Hope never deserts us, not even in an
iceberg. She attends us and supports us to the last; and although we
reject her kind offices in our fury, she still watches by us, ready to
assist and console us, when we are inclined to hearken to her
encouraging whispers.

I once more listened to her suggestions, and for six months fed upon
them, aided by occasional variations of the flesh of the sea-horse. It
was now late in the summer, and the ice in which I was bound up had
evidently melted away. One morning I was astonished by perceiving that
the light of the sun seemed to change its position regularly every
quarter of an hour. Had it done so occasionally during the day, and at
no stated intervals, I should have imagined that the ice that I was
enclosed in, altered its position with the winds and currents; but the
regularity astonished me. I watched it, and I found that the same
phenomenon occurred, but at shorter intervals, and it continued until
the light shifted from side to side every minute.

After some reflection, the horrid idea occurred to me that I must have
been drifted to the coast of Norway, and was in the influence of the
dreadful whirlpool, called the Maelstroom,