'These waters are plentifully frequented,' said I. 'A century ago in such a case as this we shouldn't have had much to hope for. What was to come? In half a year a score of yellow, humpbacked, round bowed waggons blowing away under bladder-like sails, with topmast struck and nothing but the log to tell the longitude--that was about the sum of the navigation. There was no Australia then; nothing but a Western American coast yielding a month's saunter from Acapulco to the Philippines--wonderful that they should have ever got a Spaniard to face the ice down here.' 'Did they?' 'Why, yes; they sent treasure to Europe in galleons named after saints, and when they saw a waterspout they held up their swords as crosses, and bade the thing be off in Latin.' 'Ships were as safe then as they are now,' said she, pulling off a thick glove and toasting her hand, on which sparkled a diamond or two. 'Why should this vessel have been dismasted? What progress is there to boast of when you think of this hull? Can't they plant masts which will keep erect?' 'Had that been, you and all others who were here when the squall struck you would be deeper under water than the fangs of the biggest iceberg afloat,' I answered, with a half smile at her eager gravity, as though there were nothing to interest us now but shipbuilding! 'If my life is preserved I'll never go to sea again,' she said. 'You'll have had enough of it.' 'I came for my health and it seems I have come to die.' 'Has your health improved?' 'Yes--perhaps; I don't feel whilst I talk as if the voyage had done me much good.' 'You'll write an account of these experiences when you return, and the Queen will send for you that she may see and converse with as wonderful a heroine as ever flourished in her reign.' 'What have I done to be a heroine?' I knocked the ashes out of my pipe and turned to lift the tumbler of grog that was yet half full; when my hand was arrested as though paralysed by an extraordinary noise, smooth, fierce, seething. I listened a moment, then sprang to the companion steps. CHAPTER XVII THE THICK OF IT My instant belief was we were foul of ice, scaling some side of crystal mountain smooth as though chiselled. But when I opened the companion door I was nearly flung to the bottom of the steps by a very volcanic shock of gale, white as a cloud with snow and hail. I sprang again and gained the deck, and, shutting the door, got to leeward of the companion.