track of passing vessels, and that it wasn’t much darker than it is on most nights when there’s no moon, and the sky is cloudy.

“What do you think it was? Why, he put a man on the look-out on the forecastle, just as if we were going up channel, or in a crowded sea-way! The skipper had meant him to look-out himself, but another wouldn’t be amiss, he said.

“Providentially, too, the very man whom he accidentally selected was the very best person he could have placed as look-out, if he had picked the whole crew over from the captain downward; although the mate did not know this when he sang out to him to go on the forecastle.

“This was Pat O’Brien—‘Paddy,’ as all the hands called him—an Irishman, of course, as you would judge from his name, who had been in one of the Arctic expeditions, which we were speaking of just now. He went out with Sir Leopold McClintock I think; but all I know is, that he once was up a whole winter in the Polar Sea, and there had got laid on his back with scurvy, besides having his toes frost-bitten, as he frequently told us when yarning amongst the crew of an evening.

“Generally speaking, he was a careless, happy-go-lucky fellow, and one might have wondered that Mr Stanchion called him from out the watch that had just came on deck; but, as I said before, the mate could not possibly have made a better selection, as it turned out afterwards.

“Pat O’Brien was a comic chap, full of fun, and always making jokes; so that as soon as he opened his mouth almost to say anything the other fellows would laugh, for they knew that some lark was coming.

“‘Be jabers,’ says Pat, as he goes forward in obedience to the chief officer’s order, ‘it’s a nice pleasant look-out I’ll have all by meeself! while you’re coilin’ the ropes here, I’ll be thinkin’ of my colleen there!’ and he went out on the foc’sl.

“By and by we could hear him muttering to himself. ‘Wurrah, wurrah! Holy mother, can’t you let me be aisy!’ he sang out presently aloud as if he was suffering from something, or in pain.

“‘Look-out, ahoy!’ hails Mr Stanchion from aft; ‘what’s the matter ahead—what are you making all that row about?’

“‘Sure an’ it’s my poor feet, save yer honour, that are hurting of me, they feels the frost terrible!’

“The first mate naturally thought Master Paddy was trying to play off one of his capers on him—for it wouldn’t be the first time he tried the game on; so this answer got up his temper, making him shout back an answer to the Irishman that would tell him he wasn’t going to catch him napping.

“‘Nonsense, man,’ he calls out—‘frost? Why, you are dreaming! The thermometer is up to over sixty degrees, and it’s warm enough almost for the tropics.’

“The hands, of course, thought too that Pat was only joking in his usual way and endeavouring to make fun of Mr Stanchion; and they waited to hear what would come next from the Irishman, knowing that he was not easily shut up when once he had made up his mind for anything. However, they soon could tell from the tone of voice in which Pat spoke again that he wasn’t joking this time, or else he was acting very well in carrying out his joke on the mate; for as we were laughing about his ‘poor feet,’ which was a slang term in those days, Paddy calls out again in reply to the mate:—

“‘Faix,’ says he, ‘it’s ne’er a lie I’m telling, yer honour. Be jabers! my feet feel as if they were in the ice now, and frost-bitten all over!’

“Another officer in Mr Stanchion’s place would, as likely as not, have consigned poor Pat to a warmer locality in order to warm his limbs there; but Mr Stanchion, as I’ve said, was a man of a different stamp, and a reflective one, too; and the words of the Irishman made him think of something he had read once of a frost-bitten limb having been discovered by a well-known meteorologist to be an unfailing weather-token of the approach of cold. Instead, therefore, of angrily telling Pat to hold his tongue and look-out as he ought, Mr Stanchion went forward and joined him; we on deck, of course, being on the look-out at once.

“Presently, we could see the chief officer and the Irishman on the forecastle, peering out together over the ship’s bows as if looking for something.

“‘I’m certain, sir,’ I heard Pat say earnestly, ‘we’re near ice whenever my feet feels the cold, yer honour; and there, be jabers, there’s the ice-blink, as they calls it in the Arctic seas, and we’re amongst the icebergs, as sure as you live!’

“At the same moment, the atmosphere lightened up with a whitish blue light—somewhat like pale moonshine—and Mr Stanchion shouted out at the top of his voice, louder than we ever dreamt he could speak—‘Hard a-starboard! Down with the helm for your life!’

“Bill, the boatswain, and I, who were together at the wheel, jammed down the spokes with all our strength; but the blessed brig wouldn’t come up to the wind as we wanted her. She wouldn’t, although we both almost hung on the wheel and wrenched it off the deck. ‘Hard up with the helm, men, do you hear?’ again sings out the chief officer, rushing aft as he spoke. ‘Hard up, men! all our lives are at stake!’

“And the brig wouldn’t come up, try all we could. Bill and I could have screamed with rage; but in another minute we were laughing with joy.

“The light got clear; and there, to our horror, just where we wanted the dear old brig to go—and she wouldn’t go, like a sensible creature, although we cursed her for not obeying the helm—was an enormous iceberg rising out of the depths of the ocean, and towering above the masts of the poor Jane, which I feel loth to call ‘cranky’ any longer—as high almost as the eyes could see, like the cliffs at Dover, only a hundred yards higher, without exaggeration! If the brig had come up to the wind, as Mr Stanchion sang out for us to make her, why, two minutes after, she would have struck full into the iceberg, and running, as she was, good fourteen knots and more under her jib and main-sail, her bows would have stoved in, and we’d all have been in Davy Jones’s locker before we could have said Jack Robinson!

“As it was, we weren’t out of danger by any means. There were icebergs to the right of us; icebergs astern of us, by which we had passed probably when Pat first complained of feeling the cold; icebergs ahead of us, through which we would have gingerly to make our way, for we had no option with the gale that was blowing but to keep the same course we were on, as to lie to amidst all that ice would be more dangerous even than moving on; and the big, enormous berg we had just escaped was on our left, or port side properly speaking—looking, for all the world, like a curving range of cliffs on some rock-bound coast, as it spread out more than five or six miles in length. It was certainly the biggest iceberg I ever saw in my life, beating to nothing all that I afterwards noticed in the Arctic seas when I went north in the Polaris; and perhaps that is the reason why all the ice mounds I saw there became so dwarfed by comparison that they looked quite insignificant.

“Pat kept on the forecastle, looking out and directing the course of the vessel, as the cap’en, who had just come on deck, roused by the noise, thought the Irishman’s experience in the Arctic seas would make him more useful even than himself in coursing the ship.

“The skipper was right as usual; and Pat had soon a chance of showing that his choice had not been misplaced.

“‘Kape her away! kape her away!’ Pat shouted out in a minute or two after the cap’en had come on deck ‘The top of the berg is loosenin’, yer honour; and sure it’s falling on us it will be in a brace of shakes! Kape her away, or, be jabers, it’s lost we’ll be for sartin!’

“The old brig, although she wouldn’t come up to the wind when we wanted her, and