Had we been sailing at our usual rate, it would have stove in the whole bow.

The storm immediately forced us forward again; and the bowsprit, again striking, slid along the ice with a dull, crunching sound as the schooner fell off sidewise.
"Stand by those pike-poles!" shouted the captain; for so near was the iceberg, that we could easily reach it with a ten-foot pole from the bulwarks.
Striking the iron spikes into the ice, the men held the schooner off while she drifted past.

The rumbling noise, louder than before, seemed now to come from out the solid berg.
"Let's get away from this before it splits or explodes again!" exclaimed Raed.
"Heavens! it sounds like a big grist-mill in full blast!" said Kit.
"More like a powder-mill, I should judge from the blasts we heard a few minutes ago," remarked Wade.
More poles were brought up, and we all lent a hand to push off from our dangerous neighbor.

After fending along its massy side for several hundred yards, we got off clear from an angle.
"Farewell, old thunder-mill!" laughed Kit.
But we had not got clear of it so easily: for the vast lofty mass so broke off the wind and storm, that, immediately on passing it to the leeward, we hadn't a "breath of air;" and, as a consequence, the berg soon drifted down upon us.

Again we pushed off from it, and set the fore-sail.