“You’re a bold fellow, Daggett, and one I should not like to follow in a voyage round the world,” commenced Roswell.  “Here we are, in the midst of some hundreds of ice-bergs; a glorious sight to behold, I must confess—­but are we ever to get out again?”

“It is much better to be here, Gar’ner,” returned the other, “than to be among the floes.  I’m always afraid of my starn and my rudder when among the field-ice; whereas there is no danger hereabouts that cannot be seen before a vessel is on it.  Give me my eyes, and I feel that I have a chance.”

“There is some truth in that; but I wish these channels were a good deal wider than they are.  A man may feel a berg as well as see it.  Were two of these fellows to take it into their heads to close upon us, our little craft would be crushed like nuts in the crackers!”

“We must keep a good look-out for that.  Here seems to be a long bit of open passage ahead of us, and it leads as near north as we can wish to run.  If we can only get to the other end of it, I shall feel as if half our passage back to Ameriky was made.”

The citizen of the United States calls his country “America” par excellence, never using the addition of ’North, as is practised by most European people.  Daggett meant ‘home,’ therefore, by his ‘Ameriky,’ in which he saw no other than the east end of Long Island, Gardiner’s Island, and Martha’s Vineyard.  Roswell understood him, of course; so no breath was lost.

“In my judgment,” returned Gardiner, “we shall not get clear of this ice for a thousand miles.  Not that I expect to be in a wilderness of it, as we are to-night; but after such a summer, you may rely on it, Daggett, that the ice will get as far north as 45 deg., if not a few degrees further.”

“It is possible:  I have seen it in 42 deg. myself; and in 40 deg. to the nor’ard of the equator.  If it get as far as 50 deg., however, in this part of the world, it will do pretty well.  That will be play to what we have just here—­In the name of Divine Providence, what is that, Gar’ner!”

Not a voice was heard in either vessel; scarcely a breath was drawn!  A heavy, groaning sound had been instantly succeeded by such a plunge into the water, as might be imagined to succeed the fall of a fragment from another planet.  Then all the bergs near by began to rock as if agitated by an earthquake.  This part of the picture was both grand and frightful.  Many of those masses rose above the sea more than two hundred feet perpendicularly, and showed wall-like surfaces of half a league in length.  At the point where the schooners happened to be just at that moment, the ice-islands were not so large, but quite as high, and consequently were more easily agitated.  While the whole panorama was bowing and rocking, pinnacles, arches, walls and all, seeming about to totter from their bases, there came a wave sweeping down the passage that lifted them high in the air, some fifty feet at least, and bore them along like pieces of cork, fully a hundred yards.  Other waves succeeded, though of less height and force; when, gradually, the water regained its former and more natural movement, and subsided.