They now endeavored to keep the ship before the wind, which they were partially enabled to do through the night. The next day another man died from cold and hunger.
The deck was now blown up, and her side stove in, all hands had given themselves up, when, on the 30th at noon, they were roused by the cry of "a sail!" and they had the satisfaction to see her bear down for them. She was the brig George, of Portland; and Captain Wildridge sent his long-boat to take them from the wreck.
DANGERS OF WHALING SHIPS AMONG ICE BERGS.
The masses of ice by which the ocean is traversed assume a vast variety of shapes, but may be comprehended in two general classes. The first consists of sheets of ice, analogous to those which annually cover the the lakes and rivers of northern lands. They present a surface which is generally level, but here and there diversified by projections, called _hummocks_, which arise from the ice having been thrown up by some pressure or force to which it has been subject. Sheets of ice, which are so large that their whole extent of surface cannot be seen from the masthead of a vessel, are called _fields_. They have sometimes an area of more than a hundred square miles, and rise above the level of the sea from two to eight feet. When a piece of ice, though of a considerable size, can be distinguished in its extent, it is termed a _floe_. A number of sheets, large or small, joining each other, and stretching out in any particular direction, constitute a _stream_. Captain Cook found a stream extending across Behring's Straits, connecting eastern Asia with the western extremity of North America. Owing to the vast extent of some fields of ice, they would undoubtedly be conducted to a lower latitude in the Atlantic before their dissolution, under the influence of a warmer climate, but for the intervention of other causes. It frequently happens that two masses are propelled against each other, and are both shivered into fragments by the violence of the concussion. The ordinary swell of the ocean also acts with tremendous power upon a large tract, especially when it has been so thawed as to have become thin, and breaks it up into a thousand smaller pieces in a very short period. The danger of being entrapped between two ice-fields coming into contact with each other is one of the perils which the navigator has frequently to encounter in the northern seas; and fatal to his vessel and his life has the occurrence often been, while in a vast number of instances escape has seemed almost miraculous.