Soon after two, when it was almost dark, I thought we were lost, for I saw the loom of an iceberg right abeam to leeward; but whether it was God's guidance of the devoted hull, or that the set of the long rolling sea ran a sort of sweep of tide round these floating islands, when we were within a musket shot of the mass, with an occasional shock of loose ice sounding through the hulk, our drift made a little departure. I vow it was for all the world as though the fabric was alive and, dreading her fate, avoided it, or as though she were under command, with a cool hand and a critical eye for sea measurement at the helm. Certain it is we drove past clear; it might be that we owed our preservation to the rebound of the sea. It was almost black with the night when that berg was on our lee quarter, but I knew by a sudden enormous roar of water, and by an indescribably hissing sound lasting for a few minutes, as though a thousand locomotives were blowing off steam, that an immense mass of the island had fallen, not very many ships' lengths distant, which I have no genius to do justice to, nor even to communicate, though I need but close my eyes to behold the terrible picture, with its uproar of trampling seas, and howling wind, and cracking masses. A little after four in the morning, whilst I sat in the cabin with Miss Otway, every instant expecting the hull to strike, her motions grew suddenly quiet. I felt her rise and fall upon a long swell, and knew instinctively by the feel of her that she was under the lee of something. I sprang to my feet and ran on deck. It was pitch dark, with a strange phantasmal glimmer on either hand, so vague, so indeterminable I could not see it when I looked at it. The roar of the gale, the hiss and beat of the driven seas, came as from a distance. Thrice as high as the masthead of a ship sounded the low, continuous thunder of the wind, as though it blew over mountain tops; but down where we were it was calm. Icy gusts came in moans from half a dozen quarters. The long, invisible heave was as rhythmic as the ocean pulse of swell. I understood we were embayed and foresaw certainly now that our being stranded, or being hammered to pieces against the ice, was only a question of minutes. I went into the cabin with a loathing of life coming into me out of the sheer despair that was as frost on my heart, caring not a curse how it went, so sick I was of it all after the unendurable hours of watching and expectation I had passed through; and then again I felt that, whatever was to happen, it was right I should be by the poor girl's side: not that it was in my power to comfort her--not, indeed, if the hull went to pieces, that I could be of the least use to her or myself, but I was company for her, and out of me she'd get some solace of companionship in what I reckoned these dying minutes of ours. 'Has the wind fallen? Where are we?' she shrieked as I approached her.