She started as if she would rise, and asked me to take her on deck that she might see where we were, but I thought proper to keep her below in the warmth and encourage her, and rouse her spirits by representations of our prospects of deliverance, before letting her view the situation of the hull; in truth I could not look at her and observe how delicate and fragile she was, and reflect on the depressing, heart-subduing influence of the terrors and experiences she had passed through, without fearing the effect of a sudden shock, such as might prove the sight of the savage wildness of the frowning, frozen cradle in which the hull lay as in a tomb. I went about to get some breakfast. When I got on deck with a chopper to fill the kettle, I found that the mould of fresh-water ice I had split out of the scuttlebutt was gone. I had no mind to enter the hold; indeed, I had not strength enough then to break open the frozen hatch-covers; and water being wanted for a cup of hot coffee, I chipped at a spear of ice on the bulwark and found it sweet, and perhaps sweeter than the water we had been drinking. Why? Because nearly all those frozen heads and devices of barbs and spikes were frozen snow and mist. But never could we lack fresh water in this part of the world; the cliffs ahead and astern were fresh; we were beached in fresh-water ice. Even in that early time of my distress, whilst I sucked a little piece of ice off the bulwarks to learn its quality, I found myself lifting up my eyes with amazement at those giant heights, formed, as I knew, of the vapour of the air and the sleet of the cloud and the gale. It was like thinking of some vast, soft fog clinging to the face of the land and freezing there into precipitous iron-hard rocks. Whilst making my way to the hatch with the ice, I heard a sudden great roar astern; a sharp tremble ran through the hull as though a mine had been sprung close alongside; the noise was exactly that of a broadside from a liner, every great gun discharged at once. Yet I saw no movement in the ice, nor heard any sound as of a fall. This put it into my head to fancy it might not be long before the great berg that was linked astern of us was sundered and on its way to join the rest of the mighty fleet, every one of which had had a like berth and such a despatch as awaited this.