Page:The Wireless Operator with the U.S. Coast Guard.djvu/294

 bergs, charting the position of each, noting the currents in which each floated, trying to plot the probable course of each moving mountain of ice. And every four hours the man at the wireless key sent flashing abroad a detailed warning to ships, telling where each menacing berg was located and what course it would probably take. And at night the Iroquois lay at rest, floating upon the bosom of the deep. It was dangerous enough to run through the ice fields in the daytime, when concealing mists made vision well-nigh impossible. To steam through them at night would be almost suicidal.

Anxious days were these for the commander of the Iroquois. At any moment his little cutter was likely to be disabled merely by the violence of the sea. At any moment the ship might crash into some fog-shrouded berg. Ceaseless vigilance was necessary to insure safety.

Almost greater vigilance was required to keep track of the huge bergs. Some of them towered two hundred feet in air, which meant that they were many hundred feet deep. Continually they were “calving,” or throwing off great shoulders of ice, called growlers. Every time a berg calved, its centre of gravity was disturbed and its contour altered. It rode at a new angle. Thus the berg that to-day resembled a cathedral might to-morrow look like a storage warehouse.