, many of the carpenters and others stationed
below were violently thrown down on the deck, as people are in an
earthquake. It was a moment of intense suspense.

"On the 16th, another rush drove irresistibly on the larboard quarter
and stern, and forcing the ship ahead, raised her on the ice. A chaotic
ruin followed... The ship was careened fully four streaks, and sprang a
leak as before. Scarcely were ten minutes left us for the expression of
our astonishment that anything of human build could outlive such
assaults, when another equally violent rush succeeded; and in its way
toward the starboard quarter threw up a rolling wave thirty feet high,
crowned by a blue square mass of many tons, resembling the entire side
of a house, which, after hanging for some time in doubtful poise on the
ridge, at length fell with a crash into the hollow, in which, as in a
cavern, the after-part of the ship seemed embedded. It was, indeed, an
awful crisis, rendered more frightful from the mistiness of the night
and dimness of the moon.

"The poor ship cracked and trembled violently, and no one could say that
the next minute would not be her last--and, indeed, his own too, for
with her our means of safety would probably perish."

It is unnecessary to give additional instances of this kind, in order to
show the terrible power of field-ice. Indeed, it requires little in the
way of illumination to prove that masses of solid matter, many thousands
of tons in weight, can, when in motion, utterly destroy the most
powerful engines of human construction.

We shall now turn our attention to another, and a very prominent form,
in which arctic ice presents itself--namely, that of icebergs.

CHAPTER TEN.

ICEBERGS--THEIR APPEARANCE AND FORMS--THEIR CAUSE--GLACIERS--THEIR
NATURE AND ORIGIN--ANECDOTE OF SCORESBY--RISK AMONG ICEBERGS--MCCLURE'S
EXPERIENCE.

There are not only ice-fields, ice-floes, etcetera, in the polar seas,
but there are ice-mountains, or bergs.

It was long a matter of uncertainty as to where and how those immense
mountains, that are met with occasionally at sea, were formed. We are
now in a position to tell definitely where they originate, and how they
are produced. They are not masses of frozen sea water. Their
birth-place is in the valleys of the far north, and they are formed by
the accumulation of the snows and ice of ages. This is a somewhat
general way of stating the matter; but our subsequent explanatio