bleak air; and billows that put forth their voices in a hoarse, harsh roar-made up the music of the tempest.

A sudden dying away of the wind, and an unaccountable tranquillity—a comparative tranquillity of the waters, filled our souls with transport; and many of us were expressing our joy with loud shouts and congratulations, when a voice, deep and hoarse, but thrillingly distinct, exclaimed among us "The ice islands!" "The ice islands! It is not so it cannot be," replied a dozen trembling voices; "It cannot be the ice islands!"

"It is, it is," replied the same hoarse, deep voice; "and God have mercy on us all!"

A flash of lightning, bright and universal, as if the whole sky were for an instant in a conflagration, revealed our situation to us. Masses of ice-the same that we had, in the evening, gazed upon with such pleasure and admiration stretched about us to the northwest, rolling and rocking in the waves; and near to us, very near to us, towered a vast and tremendous bulk, like some gigantic mountain, with its citadels and towers, undermined and sent drifting about in the shoreless seas. The flash was but momentary, yet it was sufficient to fill us with horror: and even after complete darkness had been restored the dashing of the billows over these floating desolations, heard above the general roar of the tempest; the grinding and crashing of the fragments, as they struck against each other with a violence, which, on the solid land, would have caused a shock like an earthquake; continued and aggravated our apprehension into a wild, ungovernable horror, little short of madness.

"We are under its lee !-It is upon us!" shouted a voice that rang like the peal of a trumpet in our ears; and at the same instant another bright and wide spread

flash discovered the tremendous object moving swiftly towards us. As if to increase the horrors of the scene, by blasting our eyes with continued sight of it, the moon, like a wan and haggard ghost, at the same time burst through the clouds; and although the horizon around, on all quarters, still remained in frightful gloom, a circumscribed central spot, embracing within its limits the terrific island and the devoted vessel, now lay in a state of vivid illumination. There came the mighty desolation, its grand cathedral-like summits reflecting and refracting the lunar rays in many a wild and fantastic spectrum, and nodding to the force of the billows that drove it onwards.

I possess but little of that philosophic indifference of death which is found in some men: my fears distracted me. I remember nothing of the catastrophe but a loud, clamorous shock; a sinking of the broken deck; a whirling of the watery chaos; a wild and congregated shriek, so piercing, so horrible, that even the savage waves seemed to restrain their fury for an instant, to listen; and then I sank insensible among the waters.

I awoke as from a painful and horrid dream, disturbed by something striking with repeated blows upon the back of my head-I lay on my face-and turning sluggishly round, I was startled by the rushing of wings. An albatross, or sea-eagle, or some fowl of the deep, darted with shrill cries before my vision. I put my hand to my head; it was bleeding and mangled. My limbs were stiff and sore, and in many places severely lacerated.

I rose, and found myself in a hollow or cavern of the ice, the bottom of which was filled with fissures, underneath which I could hear the rumbling and dashing of waves; and fearing lest this frail floor, should give way,

and precipitate me again into the abyss from which I had so providentially and mysteriously escaped, I crawled to the entrance of the cavern.

The sun was up; the waves were at rest, or rather were rolling onward with a regular and sluggish motion, scarcely sufficient to disturb the equilibrium of my icy float. Other ice bergs were seen at a distance, shining like fire in the sunbeams.

Where were my companions? I shouted aloud: nothing answered me: the silence of death was on my island. A harsh scream struck my ear. A bird of prey was hovering in the air a rod or two from me, and occasionally darting swiftly into a hollow of the ice, from which it issued again with wild cries. I approached the spot. Before me lay the corse of a young man, whose good humour and mirth had often, in dull and weary hours, enlivened the spirits of his fellow voyagers. Although his body was dreadfully mangled, and his face contorted and in some measure mutilated by the voracious fowl, I soon recognised him, and for a moment endeavoured to please myself with the thought that he was not wholly dead. This however was soon proved by his glassy and sunken eyes, his motionless heart, and the general rigidity of his limbs.

A black ribbon was hung round his neck; I drew it forth, and discovered the miniature of a beautiful young woman. I wrapped it, together with his watch and pocket-book, in his neck-cloth, determining, if saved myself, to transmit them to his friends, as mournful mementos of his unhappy end. I then lifted the body in my arms, and approaching a brink of the ice, rolled it into the sea. I would gladly have kept it by me, and made society of it, but a horrid suspicion that famine might before long tempt me to a repast abhorrent to my present

feelings, determined me to put it beyond the reach of violation, and I committed it to the deep. I was now alone.

Struck to the heart with a feeling of my loneliness and forlornness, I sat down, buried my face in my hands, and gave myself up to despair. Why had not I perished with my companions? A quiet grave at the bottom of the ocean, or in the bowels of one of ocean's monsters, was preferable to this icy and living tomb.

The love of life prevailed over despair. Providence had not snatched me from the devouring waves to expose me to a more dreadful death, by deserting me in my greater need. I rose upon my feet, and looked around me for the means of preserving my existence. I soon discovered that in the vast mass of ice, upon which I stood, there were imbedded many fragments of rocks, trunks of trees, and other substances, denoting it to have been formed on the shores of some distant land. Nothing however capable of satisfying hunger, was to be found. No frozen animal, nor lifeless bird, rewarded my search; and having wandered painfully and laboriously about, wherever the asperities of the ice, or the presence of some land object, afforded me a precarious footing, I at last reclined hopelessly upon a cloven pine tree, that projected from the ice. Above me-for the berg was of great height-towered in inexpressible grandeur, cold and glittering pinnacles of pure and almost transparent ice. Below lay the ocean, silent and calm, presenting a surface, soundless and unvaried.

The day passed away wearily and monotonously; the night found me ; and still I clung listlessly to the shattered pine.

The moon rose-I have always loved the moon; and that night, while gazing upon her pure arb, now doubly

solitary, and thinking of many friends with whom I had sat at my own vine-covered porch, almost adoring her peaceful loveliness-of many friends who might be, that very hour, in my own lost land, recalling the memory of their friend by gazing upon her again-I forgot for a time that I was alone, and a dweller on an ice berg.

A rack of clouds passed over her face; I started—a sudden explosion, followed by a long and heavy growl of thunder, admonished me of another tempest. I fastened my arms to a branch of the pine, while the winds rose, and covered the moon and stars with black clouds. The ocean again was lashed to fury, and the foam of billows dashing against the sharp angles of the island, and snatched up by the winds, broke over me in incessant showers.

It was some time before my floating habitation felt and acknowledged the influence of the storm; but when the agitation of the sea had arrived at its height, there commenced a scene so appallingly sublime, that even the apprehension of approaching destruction could not wholly unfit me for enjoying it. The island rocked, but not as a ship rocks, when she tumbles from a lofty wave into the trough of the sea, nor even as a mountain, when vexed by the earthquake in its bowels. It seemed rather to reel or spin round, like a kraaken in the whirlpool of Norway; sometimes lurching heavily over, until its tallest precipices were buried in the waves. Then a more regular assault of gusts and breakers prevailing, it would stoop and yield before the wind, and drift with amazing celerity through the waters.

Happily my position was in a central part; and although occasionally a billow more mountainous and voracious than the rest, would seem almost to overwhelm