r-twigs, which were
piled against the wall so as to form a kind of slanting pillow, against
which the party might rest their backs and heads in a half-sitting
posture, without being chilled by the ice-wall of their narrow
dormitory. Waring drew his seal-skin cap over his ears, turned up his
wide coat-collar of the same costly fur, and placed himself next to
Peter, who, as the worst clad of the party, wrapped himself in his dingy
blanket, and seated himself at the back of the hut. Regnar, in his
Canadian capote, was next, and La Salle with difficulty found room
between himself and the door for his faithful dog, whose natural warmth
had already dried his long fur, and made him a very welcome bed-fellow
under such circumstances. Thus disposed, it was not long before they all
fell asleep; and at twelve o'clock, La Salle, only half awake, gave
Regnar his watch, and saw the resolute boy go out into the storm to
commence his lonely vigil.

Scarcely feeling that he had more than got fairly to sleep again, he was
again awakened by Regnar, who said in a low voice, "'Tis two o'clock,
master; but I would not waken you if I did not think that the floe has
shifted sides, for we are no longer under a lee. I hear too, at times,
cracking and grinding of the ice, and I think we are not far from
shore."

La Salle hurriedly went out. The wind blew into his very teeth, as he
emerged from the narrow door; but it seemed no warmer or colder, and the
snow fell much the same as before. Near them, through the storm, another
berg of equal height with their own seemed to appear at times, and the
crash of falling and breaking ice arose on all sides. Still, for an hour
nothing could be seen, until between three and four the snow gave place
to a sleety rain, and the watchers saw that they were passing with
frightful rapidity a line of jagged ice-cliffs, not two hundred yards
away. La Salle called his companions, and they watched for nearly an
hour in constant expectation of having to take to their boat.

The pressure was tremendous, and on every side floes heaped up their
debris on each other, and pinnacles forced into collision were ground
into common ruin. Now shut out from view in darkness and storm, and now
close at hand in the multitudinous shiftings of the ice, the immovable
and gigantic buttresses of the ice-pool ground into powder acres of
level floe, and bergs containing hundreds of thousands of tons of ice.
Along that terrible line of imp