'Mark this!' I cried, and as I spoke--the vast fan of light then fading and no more lightning-like fire leaping--the wind that had been a fresh breeze dropped as if by magic: the sky over the bows darkened into its night of stars: the sea fell into a sloppy tumble, and within a quarter of an hour the hull was rolling quietly upon the long, wide swell of these seas with so oil-like a calm upon the steady run of the folds that, close to our port quarter, I watched the image of a bright star lengthen and shrink as it rode, till, but for the intense, dread cold of the atmosphere, you would have thought yourself becalmed near the line. 'We may drift north and go clear after all,' said I, taking the lighted bull's-eve out of the companion and looking at the binnacle by it. 'Do you hear the thunder?' said Miss Otway, following me. I listened: it was not thunder but the crackling of ice. There was no roar of sea, no howl of gale now to kill that sound; it rolled up through the night from the southward in bursts and shocks like explosions of heavy artillery; it swept over the smooth swell which looked liked smoking grease as the huge rounds noiselessly floated eastward, and it sounded as though a thunderstorm were raging over the ice. And still that brief peace that was in the night, spite of the distant thundering of the ice, was a wonderful refreshment to the spirits after the ceaseless flush of the surge to the side and the steady roar of the gale on high, shrieking as it split upon the barbs of ice the length of bulwarks bristled with. More: a change of weather might now happen to drive us northward, to drift us clear of the bergs, at all events, and so extend our chance of being fallen in with and rescued. I stayed on deck till after nine watching anxiously for any signs of a change of weather. Miss Otway came and went: she was too restless and fearful to linger below, but the frost in the night wind was too stinging to allow her to remain long above. When I went into the cabin I left the hull rolling slowly upon a swell of the sea polished as ebony; nay, so glass-like was that swollen mirror that all about us the water was sprinkled with the images of stars, with one ice-like wake swinging like a pendulum as the silver of it seemed to sink. I mixed a tumbler of hot rum and sat down before the stove to smoke a pipe, with the young lady's consent; there was a good stock of tobacco, cigars, and a little collection of pipes in the cabin that had been occupied by Captain and Mrs. Burke. Our talk was, you will suppose, all about our situation. I assured her there was little to fear saving the ice; and talked--the thing then coming into my head--of a sailor who had gone sealing for three years with one Captain Smyley; this same skipper having spent nearly half a century betwixt the River Plate and the South Shetlands.