Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/85

 *ments kept wallowing in the sea for hours before they came to rest. Even the berg to which we were moored chimed in with the infernal concert, and discharged a corner larger than St. Paul's Cathedral.

No words of mine can adequately describe the din and noise which filled our ears during the few hours succeeding the encounter which I have narrated, and therefore I borrow from the "Ancient Mariner":—

"The ice was here, The ice was there, The ice was all around; It creaked and growled, And roared and howled  Like demons in a swound."

It seemed, indeed, as if old Thor himself had taken a holiday, and had come away from his kingdom of Thrudwanger and his Winding Palace of five hundred and forty halls, and had crossed the mountains with his chariot and he-goats, armed with his mace of strength, and girt about with his belt of prowess, and wearing his gauntlets of iron, for the purpose of knocking these Giants of the frost to right and left for his own special amusement.

It is, however, only at this season of the year that the bergs are so unneighborly. They are rarely known to break up except in the months of July and August. It must be then owing to an unevenly heated condition of the interior and exterior, caused by the sun's warm rays playing upon them. From the sunny side of a berg I have not unfrequently seen pieces discharged in a line almost horizontal, with great force, and with an explosive report like a quarryman's blast. These explosions and the crumbling of the ice are always attended with a cloud of vapor,