In spite, however, of their bad reputation, the bergs have their uses for those hardy wayfarers of the sea who know them. The ancient Arctic mariner will tell you that an iceberg can sail against the wind as well as with it! Gripped for two-thirds of its bulk by a strong under-current, it can crash its way and forge ahead against the wildest adverse gale. An old whaler told of an experience he had when his ship was beset by the loose floe, and like to be crushed to matchwood. The men were striving all they knew to get her into safety, when a vast berg drove slowly down beside her through the ice, shouldering it aside as a giant liner drives through a heavy sea. With the inspiration of sheer desperation, the Captain saw his chance! The vessel was cautiously worked still nearer the berg and then kedged on to it. Towed thus, with resistless might, she too forged safely through the chafing floe to clear water and deliverance. Again, a ship—no matter of what class or tonnage—can only carry a certain quantity of water. So, too, with a whaler; she is limited in her supply. It sometimes happens that, cruising about week after week, she runs short of water. On sighting an iceberg, she sends off her boats loaded with casks, and the crews refill them either with water from the pools at the foot of the berg, or with the ice itself, which being fresh water ice, melts down, of course, into splendid drinking water after the brine and salt coating from the sea has first been scraped off. For, be it remembered, an iceberg is a portion—the seaward end—of one of the polar glaciers. As the immense ice river reaches the coast it is pushed out over the cliffs, and vast masses break off with terrific detonation, plunge into the sea, and the newly born icebergs go floating far and wide. A large number of these bergs are formed in Eternity Fiord on the Greenland coast, and the crash and roar of them can be heard for miles. As the season wears on and the whaler’s hold slowly fills with the cargo of the Arctic hunt, from time to time she puts into the sparse harbours of the northern coasts, to refit, or to meet the tribes of Eskimo gathered there to do “trade” with her. The Hudson Bay Company have lately introduced a form of coinage for this purpose, anything of the sort being previously quite unknown among the natives. Pieces of metal in various shapes represent the values of a currency and are used as money. But the prehistoric marketing of barter still holds good throughout the greater part of the Arctic regions. Sometimes a shipmate has to be left, perforce of accident or illness, to sleep the long sleep that knows no earthly waking, in this drear and far-off land.