r. "They have discovered us!"

Hope revived again within me, and my muscles regained their strength.
We were only distant about one hundred yards from shore, and rapidly
nearing it, when a scene commenced, which, for the wildly terrific,
exceeded aught I had ever before beheld. The force of the wind and the
current had driven vast fields of ice into the mouth of the river,
where it now gorged; and with frightful rapidity, and a stunning
noise, the ice began to pile up in masses of several feet in height,
until the channel was entirely obstructed. The dammed-up waters here
boiled and bubbled, seeking a passage, and crumbling the barrier which
impeded their way, dashed against it, and over it, in the mad endeavor
to rush onward. The persons seen a few moments before were driven up
to the bluff; and they no sooner reached there than Victor and myself,
struggling amid the breaking ice and the rising flood, gained the
shore; but in vain did we seek a spot upon the perpendicular sides of
the bluff, where, for an instant, we could rest from the struggle. We
shouted to those above, and they hailed us with a cheer, flashed their
torches over our heads--but they had no power to aid us, for the
ground they stood upon was thirty feet above us. Even while we were
thus struggling, and with our arms outstretched toward heaven,
imploring aid, the gorge, with a sound like the rumbling of an
earth-quake, broke away, and swept us along in its dreadful course.
Now did it seem, indeed, as if we had been tempted with hope, only
that we might feel to its full extent of poignancy the bitterness of
absolute despair. I yielded in hopeless inactivity to the current; my
companion, in the meantime, was separated from me--and I felt as if
fate had singled out me, alone, as the victim; but, while thus
yielding to despondency, Victor again appeared at my side, and held me
within his powerful grasp. He seized me as I was about to sink through
exhaustion, and dragging me after him, with superhuman strength he
leaped across the floating masses of ice, recklessly and boldly daring
the death that menaced us. We neared the shore where it was low; and
all at once, directly before us, shot up another beacon, and a dozen
torches flashed up beside it. The river again gorged below us, and the
accumulating flood and ice bore us forward full fifty feet beyond the
river's brink--as before, the tide again swept away the barrier,
leaving us lying among the fragments