The ship at reduced speed dodged about, avoiding enormous bergs along her course, while far away on every hand glinted the shining high white sides of many more of the menacing ice mountains.

The presence of the great bergs and accompanying masses of field-ice so very early in the season was most unusual.

Not only were the bergs invisible to the keenest eyes, but the sudden drop in the temperature of the ocean which ordinarily is the warning of the nearness of a berg was now of no avail; for there were so many of the bergs and so widely scattered that the temperature of the sea was uniformly cold.

Not only were the bergs invisible to the keenest eyes, but the sudden drop in the temperature of the ocean which ordinarily is the warning of the nearness of a berg was now of no avail; for there were so many of the bergs and so widely scattered that the temperature of the sea was uniformly cold.

There had been flurries of snow visible all the morning, but it was in the distance, and among the glittering bergs.

Now he scanned the ocean to the northward, and noted the diminished number as well as lessened size of the floating bergs; proofs that the summer and the waves had been at work on their sides.

But this will not lengthen the days and carry us safe through the fields and bergs that we know are drifting about out here to the northward.

The schooners had not run a league within the bergs before they felt much less of the power of the gale, and the heaving and setting of the seas were sensibly diminished.

The passage between the bergs now became quite straight, reasonably broad, and was so situated as regarded the gale, as to receive a full current of its force.

Fortuneor as Stimson would say, Providencefavoured our mariners greatly in the remainder of their run among the bergs.

Keep a good heart Gar'ner; I'll take you clear of the bergs in the course of the week.

" "I have less fear of the bergs now, than of the new ice and the floes.

[Illustration: In north-ern snows, the Po-lar Bear, 'Mid glit-ter-ing ice-bergs makes his lair.]

There were many bergs in sight, of various shapes and sizes, at some distance from the ship, which caused much anxiety to the captain, although they were only a source of admiration to our young friends in the main-top.

"Getting too near the bergs, I suspect," remarked Tom.

Here we are without a breath o' wind to get us on, right between two bergs as could crack us like a walnut.

The two bergs were within a hundred yards of each other, and the smaller of the two, being more easily moved by the current probably, was setting down on the larger at a rate that bade fair to decide the fate of the Dolphin in a few minutes.

With breathless anxiety those on board stood watching the two bergs and the approaching breeze.

Soon after passing the bergs, a stiff breeze sprang up off shore, between which and the Dolphin there was a thick belt of loose ice, or sludge, while outside, the pack was in motion, and presented a terrible scene of crashing and grinding masses under the influence of the breeze, which soon freshened to a gale.

Some of the bergs close to which they passed on the journey were very fantastically formed, and many of them were more than a mile long, with clear, blue, glassy surfaces, indicating that they had been but recently thrown off from the great glacier of the North.

" "'Tis a pity we left the ice-belt," remarked Fred, "for this rough work among the bergs is bad for man and dog.

It set the great bergs of the Polar Seas in motion, and these moving mountains of ice slowly and majestically began their voyage to southern climes, crashing through the floes, overturning the hummocks, and ripping up the ice-tables with quiet but irresistible momentum.

For two days the war of ice continued to rage, and sometimes the contending forces, in the shape of huge tongues and corners of bergs, were forced into the Bay of Mercy, and threatened swift destruction to the little craft, which was a mere atom that might have been crushed and sunk and scarcely missed in such a wild scene.

There are many things to be said about ice, whether as glaciers, or Arctic bergs, or, as it is found sometimes, contrary to its general law, at the bottom of rivers and ponds, its geological movements in the transportation of boulders, and as an article of

Leaving our drivers to get the reindeer and sledges across as best they could, the Major, Dodd, and I started on foot, picking our way between huge irregular blocks of clear green ice, climbing on hands and knees over enormous bergs, falling into wide, deep crevices, and stumbling painfully across the chevaux-de-frise of sharp splintered fragments into which the ice had been broken by a heavy sea.