the waves. The pinnacles seen in the pictures of the illustrated papers I’ve spoken of are not very plain. Indeed, both the one we are supposing and the other bergs, that are always, like the ‘birds of a feather’ of the proverb, to be seen close together, are flattened on the top; and if here and there worn into fantastic shapes by the weather, they mostly go back to a shape which may be roughly described as broader at the base than the top; otherwise the berg would speedily capsize. When this happens, they go over with a tremendous splash, rocking and churning up the sea for miles round, and sending wave circles spreading and widening out as from the whirlpool in the centre, in the same way as when a child pitches a stone into a pond.

“On some of the bergs are masses of earth, gravel and stone, proving that they must lately have been connected with the land; for owing to the old bergs becoming undermined by the waves, they soon turn over, and so of course send their load to the bottom. An examination of the sides of the ice-mass also shows to the eye some other peculiarities. The greater part of the ice is white and thoroughly full of air-bubbles, which lie in very thin lines parallel to each other; but throughout the white ice there are numerous slight cracks or streaks, of an intensely blue and transparent ice, which, on being exposed to heat, before melting, I’ve been told by the surgeon of the ship I was in, dissolve into large angular grains. These blue cracks cross and cross over again in the mass of the berg, and may possibly be water which has melted and been frozen again either on the surface of the berg, or in its crevasses or cracks when it was a part of the glacier from which it first came. But, besides the blue ice, in some icebergs may be seen a kind of conglomerate of ice-blocks of various sizes, the spaces between them being filled up with snow or crumbled ice. This conglomerate exists usually in cracks, though it is found also in layers, and even forms large masses of the larger bergs, mixed up with stones and earthy lumps.”

“Did you ever have any adventure amongst the icebergs?” I asked the old gentleman at this juncture, thinking I had quite enough of the scientific aspect of the subject, and dreading lest he might dive further into the original composition of ice.

“Not in the Arctic Ocean,” he replied; “but once, when I was only a common sailor before the mast and aboard a vessel in the Australian trade, I came across icebergs in the southern latitudes which were mighty perilous; and one of these bergs was, by the way, bigger than any I ever saw in northern seas.”

“Tell me all about it,” I said, glad to get him on to a regular sea yarn.

The old gentleman was nothing loth; and I noticed that the moment he began to speak of his old experiences as a merchant seaman, he dropped the somewhat affected phraseology in which he had previously been expounding his theories for my information concerning the polar regions and the formation of icebergs—thenceforth speaking much more naturally in the ordinary vernacular of Jack tars.

“I suppose it’s forty years ago, more or less,” he began, “since I shipped in the brig Jane, John Jiggins master, bound from London to Melbourne with an assorted cargo.

“She was a decent-sized brig enough, and handy to manage when she had plenty of sea-room, and a wind right aft; but on a bowline, or when the wind was on the quarter, and there was a bit of a sea on, she kept such a stiff weather-helm, and was such a downright cranky vessel, never bending down to a breeze or lifting to the swell, that it was no wonder that as soon as the hands got used to her ways, and tumbled to her contrary points—and she was that contrary sometimes as to remind you of a woman’s temper on washing days, most ladies then being not particularly pleasant, and feeling more inclined to drive a man mad rather than to coax and wheedle him—as soon as we all got used to her ways, I say, we christened her the ‘Cranky Jane,’ and that she was more or less, barring when she had a fair wind, with an easy sea and everything agreeable for her, as I said before.

“Old Cap’en Jiggins, however, wasn’t of our way of thinking.

“He was the part owner as well as master of the vessel; and loved the old brig—the ‘Janey’ he called her, the old fool!—like the very apple of his eye, always praising her up to the nines and not allowing anybody to say a word against her sea-going qualities.

“Sometimes, when the man at the wheel would be swearing at the lubberly craft in a silent way, so that you could see he was suffocating himself with passion and ready to burst himself, for the way in which she would fall off, or bowse up into the wind’s eye, and try to go her own way, like a horse that gets the bit between his teeth and sets his ears back, then you’d hear old Jiggins a-talking to himself about the blessed old tub.

“‘That’s it, my beauty! Look how she rides, the darling, like a duck! What a clipper she is, to be sure; so easy to handle! a child could steer her with a piece of thread!’

“When, p’raps it took all one man’s strength, and perhaps two, to bring up the beast a single point to the wind!

“In spite of Cap’en Jiggins’ praise, I never sailed in such an out-and-out obstinate craft as that identical Cranky Jane. She seemed to have been laid down on the lines and constructed, plank by plank, especially to spile a man’s temper! Somehow or other, with the very lightest of breezes—except, as I’ve said before, we had the wind right dead aft—we could never get her to lay to her course and keep it. She was always falling off and breaking away in every way but the right one, and wanting to go just in the very opposite direction to what we did; exactly like Paddy’s pig when he’s taking it to market, and he has to whisper in its ear that he’s going to Cork, when he really wants to meet the dealer at Bandon!

“This peculiarity of the brig, of course, very naturally set the men against her; as, although what is usually called a ‘dry ship’—that is, the hands could sleep comfortably in the forecastle, instead of being drenched through day and night, by the seas she took in over the bows, as is the case in some clippers I’ve sailed in—she was so dreadfully hard to steer that a man’s trick at the wheel was like going on the treadmill! And yet, that very peculiarity and contrariness that made us cuss and swear too, only induced Captain Jiggins to say occasionally when she was most outrageous wide in her yawing, ‘Pretty dear!’ or some such trash—this very peculiarity, I say, saved all our lives from the most dreadful fate, and brought us home safe to England after encountering one of the most deadly perils of the deep. Curious, isn’t it? But I’ll tell you all about it. Here goes for the yarn.

“We had done the voyage out in pretty fair time from London to Port Philip; for, most of the way, the wind was fair and almost dead aft from the meridian of the Cape of Good Hope, down in the ‘roaring forties,’ till we got to the Heads. Consequently, the brig couldn’t help herself but go straight onward, when the trades were shoving her along and while nobody wanted her to tack, or beat up, or otherwise perform any of those delicate little points of seamanship which a true sailor likes to see his ship go through, almost against his own interest, sometimes, as far as hard work is concerned in reefing and furling and taking in sail, or piling on the canvas and ‘letting her rip.’ So long as nothing of this sort was wanted from her the brig was as easy-going as you could wish and all probably that Cap’en Jiggins thought her; but, you had only just to try to get her to sail up in the wind’s eye or run with the breeze a bit ahead of the beam, and you’d soon have seen for yourself how cantankerous she could be!

“No, it was all plain sailing to Port Philip Heads; and even after we had unloaded our