'It's the extra coldness that makes the smell. Tain't no smell in the or'nary meaning,' said the boatswain after a pause. 'The first time I ever learnt that a man could smell ice in a breeze full of frost and snow was in my first voyage in these parts. We was running off the Horn, not so low as this here, in a smother o' flakes, nothen visible of the ship from the wheel but her mainmast. I and another was steering the ship, the mate comes rushing aft and sings out to the captain who was walking abreast of the wheel, "I smell ice, sir." They both took a sniff, and I could see by their way of snuffing they both smelt it plain. They looked into the driving smother to starboard and then to port, and then all on a sudden a man on the fok'sle cries out, "Ice right ahead." "Hard aport!" sings out the capt'n, and out it jumped, big as a church, right on the bow. Smelt it myself then.' A low growl of laughter ran amongst the men, and several looked as though they too had yarns to spin. I scarcely slept that night. The cold was terrible, and there were the noises of the sea and the gale, and the heart-maddening rolling and plunging. Yet, wonderful to relate, next morning, exactly as on the day before, a dead calm was in the air, and the swollen hills of swell ran in liquid lead in a confused shouldering. I went on deck with Mrs. Burke at about twelve, and watched the men completing the captain's toy-like affair of jury-mast. They had set a jib upon the bowsprit, and were now bending a sail to a yard which was to be hoisted to the head of the jury-mast. The lean stick was so abundantly stayed that it looked like the inside of an umbrella. The rolls of the hull were dangerous and very fierce; it was impossible to walk the deck. This morning they had got a fire in the galley, which had been roughly repaired. The brown smoke floated straight up out of the swaying chimney, and, trifling as that detail of colour and life was, yet somehow it brought back to the poor old hull something of her old spirit and look. No farmyard sounds came from forward; no grunt from the long-boat, no cackle nor crow from the hencoop; all the live-stock had been frozen or drowned during the first night of the gale, when the masts went. I saw those glancings of ice on the horizon which I had taken notice of yesterday; they hung in the same quarters, and flamed at the same distance against the dark sky with a fairy, star-like brightness. I turned my eyes in every direction for a sail. 'Don't ships ever come this way?' I asked. 'Oh, yes, many,' answered Mrs. Burke. 'What sort of ships?' 'Whalers chiefly, Edward says.' 'Suppose one should come; what will Captain Burke do?' 'Ask her to tow us.' 'If the master declines? This is a big, helpless vessel for another ship to tow in such seas as run here. And what would a ship do with us in tow should we meet with such weather as blew last night or the night before?' She made no answer.