84 THE WORLD OF ICE.

with its forehead ploughing up the smaller ice as if in
scorn. A happy thought flashed across the captain's
mind.

“Down the quarter boat,” he cried.

In an instant it struck the water, and four men
were on the thwarts.

“Cast an ice-anchor on that berg.”

Peter Grim obeyed the order, and, with a swing
that Hercules would have envied, planted it securely.
In another moment the ship was following in the
wake of this novel tug! It was a moment of great
danger, for the bergs encroached on their narrow canal
as they advanced, obliging them to brace the yards to
clear the impending ice-walls, and they shaved the
large berg so closely that the port quarter-boat would
have been crushed if it had not been taken from the
davits. Five minutes of such travelling brought them
abreast of a grounded berg, to which they resolved to
make fast. The order was given to cast off the rope.
Away went their white tug on his race to the far
north, and the ship swung round in safety under the
lee of the berg, where the crew acknowledged with
gratitude their merciful deliverance from imminent
danger.