Everyone knows and feels that something unusual has taken place, but no man there can say what it is. A muttered order is heard, and in a minute a flood of vivid blue fire pours out into the darkness from the ship’s quarter, and a great subdued ‘Ah!’ runs fore and aft her, as, by its glare, we see tall, jagged cliffs, weird and ghastly in the strange light, towering far on high above our mast-heads, which appear to touch them. ‘Get the deep-sea lead overboard!’ shouts the captain. ‘Watch, there, watch!’ needlessly cry the men, as the line slips from their hands; and no bottom at one hundred fathoms. ‘’Taint land at all,’ says the mate quietly. ‘I kin smell ice; an’ ef we don’t mind we may calculate to winter ’mongst it ’stead o’ makin’ tracks for the Antipodes. Lower the quarter-boat,’ he goes on, ‘an’ tie the ship up for the night, as, ef I ain’t mistook, we’re pooty nigh surrounded.’ More bluelights are burned, and by their help and those of lanterns, the _Boadicea_, in a somewhat unnatural plight, is warped alongside a kind of ice jetty which stretches out from the main mass, and which, as if to save us the trouble of carrying out anchors, also to complete the resemblance to a pier, is furnished here and there with great knobs, to which we make fast our lines. If you will try and picture to yourself the scene I have described, you will, I think, be willing to admit that ship seldom entered stranger harbour in a stranger manner, or that the ‘sweet little cherub, sitting up aloft,’ who is supposed to keep a special look-out for ‘poor Jack,’ and who on the present occasion—all the more honour to him—must have felt colder even than the proverbial upper hank of a Greenlandman’s gib, seldom performed his duty better. Perhaps the all-pervading stillness was the thing that struck us most. The fenders, even, between the ship’s side and her novel pier scarcely gave a creak. And yet we were conscious that, somewhere, not very far away, it was beginning to blow freshly, although the sound fell on our ears but as a subdued, faint murmur, serving only to intensify the surrounding silence and hush. ‘There’s a fire up there!’ exclaimed one of the men, presently. And, sure enough, a tiny, sickly flame appeared far away above us. It grew gradually larger and larger, till at length a long, broad streak of silver shot down the ice-mountains and fell athwart our decks, as a three-quarters-full moon, pale, washed-out and sickly-looking, shone for a minute through the low, black clouds hurrying swiftly across her face. A dull, grey dawn, at last, giving us just enough light to see what had happened. Ice everywhere! The ice was here, the ice was there, The ice was all around;