The sea was one empty wilderness of black and white hills. It was a piece of an ice-floe melted down to a fragment, but still big enough to sink a ship, and floating lower than any raft, right in our way, as if ambushed among the waves with murderous intent. There was no time to get down on deck. I shouted from aloft till my head was ready to split. I was heard aft, and we managed to clear the sunken floe which had come all the way from the Southern ice-cap to have a try at our unsuspecting lives.
Nobody can say with what thoughts, with what regrets, with what words on their lips they died.
But there is something fine in the sudden passing away of these hearts from the extremity of struggle and stress and tremendous uproar - from the vast, unrestful rage of the surface to the profound peace of the depths, sleeping untroubled since the beginning of ages. Maritime risks, be it understood. But nothing can insure the hearts on shore against the bitterness of waiting for the worst. It must blaze up, indeed, with a great brilliance the dull printer's ink expended on the assemblage of the few letters that form the ship's name to the anxious eyes scanning the page in fear and trembling. It is like the message of reprieve from the sentence of sorrow suspended over many a home, even if some of the men in her have been the most homeless mortals that you may find among the wanderers of the sea.