It was a race between the bergs and the barque; and Mildmay, standing there by the after rail, told himself, as he breathlessly watched the progress of events, that the bergs would win. The contiguous sides of these monsters were slightly concave in shape; and whilst the whaler, still some dozen yards or so within the passage had a foot or two of clear water on either side of her, the projecting extremities of the bergs had neared each other to within a distance of twenty feet, or some five feet less than the breadth of the imprisoned ship. Suddenly a tremendous crash was heard, and the party on board the _Flying Fish_ looked to see the unfortunate barque collapse and crumple into a shapeless mass of splintered wood before their eyes. But, to their inexpressible astonishment, nothing of the sort occurred. There was a reverberating sound as of muffled thunder, which echoed and re- echoed in the confined space between the two bergs; a series of tremendous splashes just astern of the whaler; the bergs recoiled violently from each other; the baronet, more by instinct than anything else, threw the engine lever still further forward, and before anyone had time even to draw a breath of relief, the apparently doomed vessel was dragged, with a foaming surge heaped up round her bows as high as the figurehead, out from the reopened portal and clear of all danger a single instant before the two gigantic masses of ice again closed in upon each other with a horrible grinding _crunch_ which must have been audible for miles. It was not until the barque had been dragged, almost bows under, some fifty or sixty fathoms away from the still grinding and rasping bergs, that her crew were able to realise the astounding fact of their safety, but when they did so they sent up a wild cheer which was as distinct an expression of gratitude to God for their deliverance as ever issued from human lips. Their escape, though it could easily be accounted for, might indeed well be called miraculous, for at the moment when their last hope was extinguished--apparently their last chance gone--two huge overhanging projections on the summits of the bergs had come into contact with such violence that both the projecting masses of ice had become detached and had gone thundering down into the water, fortunately at some few yards' distance astern of the whaler, and the shock of collision had been so great as to compel the momentary recoil of the bergs, with the fortunate result already described.