nder-battered peaks rising abruptly from the ocean, casting long
black shadows to the eastward. Many of them were mere tide-washed
ledges, environed by ice-fields.

About nine o'clock, evening, the ice-patches began to thicken ahead.
By ten we were battering heavily among it, with considerable danger of
staving in the bows. The foresail was accordingly taken in, and double
reefs put in the mainsail. The weather had changed, with heavy
lowering clouds and a rapidly-falling thermometer. Nevertheless we
boys turned in, and went to sleep. Experience was beginning to teach
us to sleep when we could. The heavy rumble of thunder roused us.
Bright, sudden flashes gleamed through the bull's-eyes. The motion of
the schooner had changed.

"What's up, I wonder?" asked Kit, sitting up on the side of his
mattress.

Another heavy thunder-peal burst, rattling overhead. Hastily putting
on our coats and caps, we went on deck, where a scene of such wild and
terrible grandeur presented itself, that I speak of it, even at this
lapse of time, with a shudder; knowing, too, that I can give no
adequate idea of it in words. I will not say that I am not glad to
have witnessed it; but I should not want to see it again. To the
lovers of the awfully sublime, it would have been worth a journey
around the earth. It seemed as if all the vast antagonistic forces of
Nature had been suddenly confronted with each other. The schooner had
been hove to in the lee of an ice-field engirdling one of the smaller
islets, with all sail taken in save the jib. Weymouth was at the
wheel; the captain stood near him; Hobbs and Donovan were in the bow;
Bonney stood by the jib-halliards. On the port side the ice-field
showed like a pavement of alabaster on a sea of ink, contrasting
wildly with the black, rolling clouds, which, like the folds of a huge
shroud, draped the heavens in darkness. On the starboard, the heaving
waters, black as night, were covered with pure white ice-cakes,
striking and battering together with heavy grindings. The lightnings
played against the inky clouds, forked, zigzag, and dazzling to the
eye. The thunder-echoes, unmuffled by vegetation, were reverberated
from bare granitic mountains and naked ice-fields with a hollow rattle
that deafened and appalled us; and, in the intervals of thunder, the
hoarse bark of bears, and their affrighted growlings, were borne to
our ears with savage distinctness. Mingled with these noises came the
screams and