It was not yet daybreak; but when some while after the faint, grey light sifted through the blowing, swelling, roaring gloom, the sight struck to my very heart and I was sure we were doomed. The sea was running in hills of liquid lead; many clouds of mist were in the wind and they blew athwart the hull like bursts of steam; snow in places was rushing in horizontal lines out of dark low clouds flying southwards. Ice was all about us. The first object that dawn revealed, whilst I stood in the companion-way watching, was a mountain of ice on the bow; as features of it stole out a snow-squall looked to have fouled a whole stack of pinnacles on the left of the berg; it was dark as smoke there, with snow whirling in a very maelstrom of froth-like whiteness; the seas slipped their foam up its side to a height of fifty feet, and the brine flashed in clouds of crystals against the dull, marble-like face, which showed smooth as a wall through the haze and the whirl of flying vapour that shrieked athwart our decks to it. _It_ was but one. I counted twenty coming and going amid the shadows of the squalls and flying masses of fog. You would have supposed that a fleet somewhere hidden were firing great guns, so thunderous was the splintering of those bergs majestically rocking their mighty masses. The nearest--that on the starboard bow--was about a mile off. Others showed to port and astern: one heap, like an island, darkened the haze on the port bow. The gale had apparently broken up the barrier and we were in the thick of the floating bodies. Miss Otway came to the foot of the companion steps and waited for me to make way for her. I stepped out and she ascended the steps and looked round the sea, but in silence. Her face was hardened into stone by despair. Hours of suspense and grief, hours spent in the most awful kind of loneliness the imagination can figure, with the darkness of the spirit of death for ever upon her heart, had done their work with the poor young lady: sensation was dumb. And now there was nothing to do but await the end, come what might. I let her stand a little, looking, then taking her by the arm, gently but firmly, conducted her below and seated her where she had lain during the night. I was resolved that my own despair should not be visible to her, and partly to cover myself, so to speak, and partly for the good of the thing, I boiled some coffee, and put food on the deck near the stove; but one looked at such a repast with the emotions of a malefactor to whom breakfast is served whilst the hangman waits. Whilst I was at this work she addressed me calmly: 'There is no doubt, I suppose, that we shall strike the ice?' 'It's most inevitable,' I answered. 'If it happens, shall we be better off down here than on deck?' 'Let it happen,' said I.