At length, however, after four hours' toil, we accomplished our journey in safety, and the shipwrecked crew were welcomed on board the _Shetland Maid_. Some persons might say that, after all, they had little to congratulate themselves on, for that the same accident which had happened to them might occur to-morrow to us. Though we were, of course, aware of this, I must say that I do not believe the idea ever troubled any one of us; and we all fully expected to return home in the autumn, notwithstanding the destruction which was, we saw, the lot of so many. That night in the forecastle there was as much fun and laughter as if we had all come off some pleasant excursion, and our light-hearted guests seemed entirely to have forgotten their losses. "Well, mates, it is to be hoped none of the other ships has met with the same ill-luck that yours has," said old David. "It will be a wonder if they have not. I mind the time, for it's not long ago, that nineteen fine ships were lost altogether, about here. It was a bad year for the underwriters, and for the owners too, let me tell you. I was on board the _Rattler_, a fine new ship, when, in company with many others, we were beset, not far from Cape York, by the ice driven in by a strong south-wester. "Our best chance was to form a line under the lee of the heaviest floe we could pick out; and there, stem and stern touching each other, we waited for what was to come. The gale increased, and forced the floes one over the other, till the heaviest in sight came driving down upon us. The first ship it lifted completely on to the ice; the next was nearly stove in, and many of her timbers were broken; and then, getting more in earnest, it regularly dashed to pieces the four next it got foul of, sending them flying over the ice in every direction. "We were glad enough to escape with our lives, which we had hard work to do; and then some hundreds of us were turned adrift, not knowing what to do with ourselves. We thought ourselves badly off, but we were many times better than the people of another ship near us. They had made fast to an iceberg, when it toppled right over, and crushed them and the ship to atoms. We were not alone; for not far from us another fleet was destroyed, and altogether we mustered nearly a thousand strong-- Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Danes. We built huts, and put up tents; and as we had saved plenty of provisions, and had liquor in abundance, we had a very jolly time of it. "The Frenchmen had music, you may be sure; so we had dancing and singing to our hearts' content, and were quite sorry when the wind shifted, and, the ice breaking up, we had to separate on board the few ships which escaped wreck."