t for craft, crawling to the mastheads so as
to obtain a view over the blocks of ice which lay in masses at the
stem and stern of the whaler. But though we often caught sight of a
distant sail, nothing ever approached us close enough to observe our
signal. Once, indeed, a large steamer passed within a couple of miles
of the iceberg, and we watched her with devouring eyes, forever
imagining that she was slowing down and about to stop, until she
vanished out of our sight past the north end of the berg. Yet, we had
no other hope of rescue than that of being taken off by a passing
ship.

I never recollect meeting at sea with such a variety of weather as we
encountered. There would be clear sunshine and bright blue skies for a
day, followed by dark and bellowing nights of storm. Then would come
periods of thick fogs, followed by squalls, variable winds, and so on.
We guessed, however, that our trend was steadily southwards, by the
steady cascading of the ice, by the frequent falls of large blocks,
and by the increasing noises of sudden, tremendous disruptions, loud
and heart-subduing as thundershocks heard close to.

"If we aren't taken off," said Sweers to me one day, "there's just
this one chance for us. The ice is bound to melt. All these bergs, as
I reckon, disappear somewhere to the nor'ard of the verge of the Gulf
Stream. Well, now the Lord may be good to us, and it may happen that
this berg'll melt away and leave the whaler afloat; and float she must
if she isn't crushed by the ice. Let her leak like a sieve--there's
oil enough in her to keep her standing upright as though she were a
line-of-battle ship."

Well, we had been a little more than a fortnight upon this ship hard
and fast upon the ice. Many a vessel had we sighted, but never a one
of them, saving the steamer I have mentioned, had approached within
eyeshot of our distress signal. Yet our health was good, and our
spirits tolerably easy; we had fared well, there was no lack of food
and drink, and we were beginning to feel some confidence in the
iceberg--by which I mean to say that the rapid thawing of its upper
parts, where all the weight was, filled us with the hope that the mass
wouldn't capsize as we had feared; that it would hold together so as
to keep the ship on end as she now was until we were rescued, or,
failing our being rescued, that it would dissolve in such a way as to
leave the whaler afloat.

It was somewhere about the end of a fortnight, a