Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/131

 of the iceberg. She had not moved more than a dozen lengths before a huge mass of ice fell from the iceberg in  her wake. If this had happened twenty minutes before, it would have crushed the ship to atoms. As soon as we gained the open sea, Captain Hudson very wisely put the  ship’s head for Sydney, where she arrived in a shattered  and sinking condition. For several days the weather had been foggy.

January 26. Hove to alongside of an iceberg, lowered a boat, and took in a supply of ice. Filled several of our tanks with it.

TABULAR ICEBERG.

January 27. Weather fair. Wind from the sou’-sou’- west. All day working the ship out of an ice-floe. A long row of tabular icebergs were in sight from the south. Latitude 64°1’ south.

January 28. Weather fair. We were now surrounded by many tabular icebergs, from half a mile to three miles  in length. We had run some forty miles through them, when we made high land ahead, eighteen or twenty  miles to the other side of the ice barrier. We hove the lead and found bottom at thirty fathoms. Coarse black sand covered the arming.