che, she darted down the
great ice slide, stem first, till, at the bottom, where the iceberg
ended abruptly in a precipice forty or fifty feet high, she shot right
off, plunging her bowsprit the next instant in the water, and then all
was darkness.

The sensation of the slide down was not unpleasant; the rush through the
air was even agreeable; but to dart down into the depths of the ocean
like some mighty whale, was awful. There was a strange roaring and
singing in the ears; a feeling of oppression, as if miles of water were
over one's head; a sense of going down, down, down into the depths that
were like ink; and then, by degrees, all grew lighter and lighter, till,
with a dart like a diving-bird, the stout iron steamer sprang to the
surface, rolled for a minute or two with the water streaming from her
scuppers, and then floated easily on the sea, with the iceberg half a
mile astern.

"Bravo!--bravo, captain! Capitally done!" cried the doctor. "As fine a
bit of seamanship as ever I saw; but you need not have made us so wet!"

"Thanky, sir!" I said, for I was so taken aback and surprised that I
didn't know what to say, the more so that Abram Bostock, Scudds, and the
rest of them took their tone from the doctor, nodded their heads, and
said, "Very well done, indeed!"

I didn't believe it at first, till I had had the pump well sounded; but
the ship was quite right, and as sound as ever, so that half an hour
after we had made sail, and were leaving the iceberg far behind.

It was some time before I could feel sure that it wasn't all a dream;
but the cool way in which the doctor took it all served to satisfy me,
and I soon had enough to take up my attention in the management of the
ship.

For the next fortnight we were sailing or steaming on past floating ice,
with the greatest care needed to avoid collision or being run down.
Then we had foul weather, rain, and fog, and snowstorm, and the season
seeming to get colder and colder for quite another fortnight, when it
suddenly changed, and we had bright skies, constant sunshine night and
day, and steamed slowly on through the pack ice.

The doctor grew more confidential as we got on, telling me of the
jealousy with which he had watched the discoveries of other men, and
how, for years, he had determined that Curley and Pole should be linked
together. He said that there was no doubt about the open Polar Sea, and
that if we could once get through the pack ice into i