FullReads

“‘This cannot last long!’ said the captain.

“The words were on his lips when we struck with a noise like the splintering of glass. We were all thrown down, and my companion screamed like a mad thing. The captain rose and ran to the bows; and in a moment he came back and his beard was shaking.

“‘God save us!’ he cried, ‘and fetch aft the rum!’

“There you have man in his invincible moods. They drank till they were in a condition to face death; and then they found that our situation was rather improved than otherwise by the collision. For–so it appeared–we had run full tilt for a perpendicular fissure in a huge block, and into that our bows were firmly wedged, the nature of the impact distributing the shock, and the berg itself carrying us along with it and protecting us.

“Now the dipping motion of the vessel was exchanged for a heavy regular wash along its stern quarters; for the bows were so much raised as that I felt a little strain on my knees as I went forward to satisfy my curiosity with a view of the icy mass into which we were penetrated. I waited, indeed, until the crew were come aft again from looking, and my friend crept timidly at my shoulder; but when we reached the stem, there was one of the hands, a little soberer than his fellows, sprawled over the bulwarks, and staring with all his eyes into the green lift of the wall against him.

“‘Is it a mermaid you see, Killigrew?’ I asked.

“The man shifted his gaze to me slowly and solemnly.

“‘Nowt, nowt,’ said he; ‘but a turble monster, like a pram stuck in jelly.’

“I laughed, and went to his side. The fog, as I have said, was dense and bright, and one could see into it a little way, as into a milky white agate. But now and again a film of it would pull thin, and then sunlight came through and made a dim radiance of the ice.

“‘I can make out nothing,’ I said.

“He cocked an eye and leered up at me. ‘Look steady and sober,’ he said, ‘and you’ll make en owut like as in a glass darkly.’

“I gave a little gasp and my friend a cry before the words were issued from the man’s mouth. Drawn by some current of air, the fog at the moment blew out of the cleft, like smoke from a chimney; and there, before our gaze, was a great curved tusk coming up through the ice and inside it.

“Now I clapped my hands in an agony, lest the fog should close in again, and the vision fade before my eyes; for, following the sweep of the tusk, I was aware of the phantom presentment of some monster creature lying imbedded within the ice, its mighty carcase prostrate as it had fallen; the conformation of its enormous forehead presented directly to our gaze. Its little toffee-ball eyes–little proportionately, that is to say–squinted at us, it seemed, through half-closed lids, and a huge, hairy trunk lay curled, like the proboscis of a dead moth, between its tree-like fore-legs. Away beyond, the great red-brown drum of its hide bellied upward on ribs as thick as a Dutch galliot’s, and sprouting from its shoulders was the hump I have mentioned, but here, from its position, sprawled abroad and lying over in a shapeless mass.

“There was something else–horribly nauseating but for its strangeness. The brute had been partly disembowelled, as there was ample evidence to show, for the ice had preserved all.

“Suddenly my companion gave a high nervous shriek.

“‘Look!’ he cried–‘the hand! the hand sticking out of the side!’

“I saw in a moment; turned, and called excitedly to the captain. He–all the crew–came tumbling forward up the slippery deck. I seized him by the shoulder.

“‘Do you see?’ I screamed–‘the human hand beckoning to us from that great body!’

“He gazed stupidly, swaying where he stood.