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"She shrivelled him with a look, the likes of which ain't strayed over the Mason-Dixon line since Lee surrendered, and swept by us, invitin' an' horspitable as an iceberg in a cross sea. Her cab door slammed, and I yanked Morrow out of there, more dead than alive. "'Let me go home, says he wearily. "'You bet! I snorts. 'It's time you was tucked in.
An iceberg before me could not more have chilled me; nor could the cold of an iceberg have been more purely physical. I feel convinced that it was not the cold caused by fear. As I continued to gaze, I thought but this I cannot say with precision that I distinguished two eyes looking down on me from the height.
"It is an iceberg," exclaimed Harry, "and directly in our course. Had it not been lighted up by the Aurora, we might have been close upon it without its being observed." He carefully took its bearings by the compass, while the Aurora continued. Even the men at the oars could not help uttering exclamations of astonishment while the glorious spectacle was exhibited before them.
If this rate of progress could be maintained for three weeks, there was every chance of our finding the passes open, and being able to get round the iceberg barrier; also that the whaling-ships would not yet have left the fishing-grounds. The sun was on the verge of the horizon, and the time was approaching when the Antarctic region would be shrouded in polar night.
And if the schooner were to fall into the abyss, which of us could extricate himself safe and sound from such a fall, and then from the final plunge into the depths of the ocean? In a few minutes the crew had abandoned the Halbrane. Each man sought for refuge on the ice-slopes, awaiting the time when the iceberg should be freed from mist.
But in telling what I found on the iceberg, and what happened to me there, I may have to tax somewhat the credulity of my readers. I shall now give the general result of an exploration of the iceberg, which occupied me for several days. I use the word day in the ordinary sense, as indicating a period of twenty-four hours; although, during my stay in the arctic region, the daylight was perpetual.
Aubrey Leigh caught these rumours, and was in a manner stung by them, he said very little however, and to all the congratulations he received, merely gave coldly civil thanks. And so the gossips went to work again in their own peculiar way, and said, "Well! She will have an iceberg for a husband, that is one thing! A stuck up, insolent sort of chap! not a bit of go in him!"
On that evening, Captain Nemo ought to open the taps of his reservoirs, and let some pure air into the interior of the Nautilus; without this precaution we could not get rid of the sense of suffocation. The next day, March 26th, I resumed my miner's work in beginning the fifth yard. The side walls and the lower surface of the iceberg thickened visibly.
But the question of indirect responsibility raises at once many issues and, I think, removes from Captain Smith a good deal of personal responsibility for the loss of his ship. Some of these issues it will be well to consider. In the first place, disabusing our minds again of the knowledge that the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank, let us estimate the probabilities of such a thing happening.
Finally, during the afternoon of the last day they expected to spend on shipboard, a distant white speck dead ahead, which was at first taken for a sail, proved to be an iceberg, and from that moment it was watched with the liveliest curiosity.
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