The bergs are the terror of every shipmaster crossing the North Atlantic. They are fragments from the stupendous Greenland glaciers, forced out of the Arctic seas by thousands every summer, and carried south by the currents, passing Newfoundland during the winter and being dissolved by the warmer embraces of the Gulf Stream as they enter it the next spring. The largest of them ground on the Newfoundland coast and on the Grand Banks, as a berg carries seveneighths of its bulk below water, and they often stick fast for weeks. Hence, in this area they linger the whole year round, and are a never-absent source of danger. Nature offers few more impressive sights than these beautiful ivory sea-castles, endowed with every graceful and fantastic outline, and often 500 feet high and a half a mile long. They excite the admiration of all beholders when viewed from a position of safety, but no object is more dreaded by the sailor when, in the inky blackness of a midnight storm, the blinding fury of a snow squall, or the ghastly shroud of a sodden fog, his ship is crossing the ice-belt on the Banks. For the bergs are thickest there in the path of the steamers, unwarning in their approach and deadly in their embrace, and woe to the ship, however staunch, that tests herself against the towering crystal cliffs.

So many and serious were the accidents from this cause that, in 1897, the chief New York lines abandoned the direct route across the Banks for a safer sea-road farther south. This lessened but did not end the risk. In September,

1899, the "City of Rome," from Glasgow for New York, with 1,600 humans aboard, 500 being saloon passengers, struck a berg at midday, in the steamertrack, while running half speed through a fog. With a double watch set, and the passengers at lunch, the crash came. Men and meals were shot into a heap below the stairway, whence a frightened crowd rushed for the deck. Fortunately, discipline was good; the rush was stemmed, and the panic soon ceased. The berg, a small flat one known as a "growler," was cut in two by the ship, whose bow was stove below water. Her bulkheads kept tight, however, and she reached port safely.

The most remarkable case on record of an iceberg collision is that of the Guion liner "Arizona" in 1879. She was then the greyhound of the Atlantic and the largest ship afloat-5,750 tons-except the "Great Eastern." Leaving New York in November for Liverpool, with 509 souls aboard, she was coursing across the Banks, with fair weather, but dark, when, near midnight, about 250 miles east of St. John's, she rammed a monster ice-island at full speed-18 knots. Terrific was the impact and indescribable the alarm. The passengers, flung from their berths, made for the deck as they stood, though some were so injured as to be helpless, and the calls of these forward, added to the shrieks of the frenzied mob of half-clad men and women who charged for the boats, made up a pandemonium. Wild cries arose that the ship was sinking, for she had settled by the head, and with piteous ap

peals and despairing exclamations the passengers urged the boats over, that they might escape the death they thought inevitable. But the crew were well in hand, the officers maintained order, and, a hurried examination being made, the forward bulkhead was seen to be safe. The welcome word was passed along that the ship, though sorely stricken, would still float until she could make a harbor. The vast white terror had lain across her course, stretching so far each way that, when described, it was too late to alter the

Courtesy of McClure Co.

helm. Its giant shape filled the foreground, towering high above the masts, grim and gaunt and ghastly, immovable as the adamantine buttresses of a frowning seaboard, while the liner lurched and staggered like a wounded thing in agony as her engines slowly drew her back from the rampart against which she had flung herself.

She was headed for St. John's at slow speed, so as not to strain the bulkhead too much, and arrived there thirty-six hours later. The little port-the crippled

ship's hospital-has seen many a strange sight come in from the sea, but never a more astounding spectacle than that which she presented the Sunday forenoon she entered there.

"Begob, Captain," said the pilot, as he swung himself over the rail, "I've heard of carrying coals to Newcastle, but this is the first time I've seen a steamer bringing a load of ice into St. John's."

They are a grim race, these sailors, and, the danger over, the captain's reply was: "We were lucky, my man, that we didn't all go to the bottom in an ice-box." A story whose amazing features outrival even the tale of the Ancient Mariner is that of the nineteen persons from the Arctic ship "Polaris." She was crushed off Northern Greenland in October, 1871, and the survivors were rescued from an ice-floe on the Grand Banks the following April by the Newfoundland sealer "Tigress," after having been adrift 193 days, and traversing 1,600 miles of ocean on this island of ice.

The most marvelous story of all is that of the steamer "Portia," which embodies an incident as fanciful as ever Clark Russell conceived. She plied between New York and Newfoundland, her captain being Francis Ash, an experienced navigator of St. John's who had been ice-pilot of Schley's squadron when it rescued the survivors of the Greely Arctic expedition in 1884. In June, 1893, while off the Newfoundland coast with many tourists aboard, she sighted on a clear day a gleaming northern monarch, the magnificent proportions of which excited the admiration of the passengers, who had never seen the like before. Captain Ash estimated its length at 800 feet and its height at 200, and, with the fantastic pinnacles and crystal sides giving back a flood of rainbow tints, it is not surpris

ing that the delighted onlookers begged the skipper to go near, so that they might snapshot or sketch this ocean colossus at close range. Suddenly, as the ship slowly advanced, a gun-shot from the berg, a jar was felt, the ship grated heavily, a low rumbling sound was heard, the berg quivered and split asunder, and, to the horror of all on board, it was realized that the ship was aground on part of the icy isle. As this mighty fragment sought a new equilibrium in the ocean, its submerged base, being tossed upward, caught the "Portia" as in a cradle, or dock, and lifted her clear out of the water.

For a moment or two the situation of the ship and those aboard was critical beyond compare. She lay, nearly upright, in a shelving section of the berg, and if this completed its somersault she and her personnel must meet instant destruction. The horror of it blanched every cheek and stilled every tongue. Fortunately the weight of hull and cargo checked the up-ending motion and sent the mass settling back again. A huge wave created by the cleavage swept over the fragment holding the "Portia" and launched her back into her native element, with bottom scarred and bruised, but otherwise uninjured.

Though the story seems incredible, yet it is undeniably true. As the "Portia" approached the berg she ran on a submerged ledge of it. This disturbed the equilibrium of the main body, and the ice below the surface being honeycombed, or rotten, from the effect of the salt water and the summer sun, the shock caused it to turn over, and in doing so it split apart and she was caught on one portion. The escape seems still more miraculous when one realizes that, had she not kept a fairly even keel, she must

surely have sunk as she swept back into the sea. As it was, she had all she could do to battle with the mighty billows that threatened to engulf her, and she was headed away from this scene of peril with all hearts rejoicing that they had been mercifully spared after an experience that no others had ever been brought face to face with.

But the steamers are not the only ships that fare badly against bergs. Sailers meet even worse disasters. In April, 1897, occurred the most heartrending tragedy in the records of the Grand Banks, one whose horrible story outrivals even fiction. The French brigantine "Vaillant," from France for St. Pierre, Miquelon, with 74 men aboard to engage in codfishing there, dashed herself against a berg at midnight, 120 miles off St. John's. The craft went to pieces like

a bundle of boards, and those half-clad wretches who escaped being killed by the broken timbers when she struck rushed on deck and threw over the boats. The wildest confusion prevailed, and the frightened crowd swarmed into the skiffs, overturning them and drowning themselves. About 25 perished this way and 35 got away-21 in the life-boat, 7 in a jolly-boat, and 7 in a "dory"-a flatbottomed skiff used in fishing. They had no food, no water, no sails, and no oars. The men lacked adequate clothing, being coatless and wearing wooden "sabats" without stockings. The sea ran high and drenched them, and the frost chilled their marrow. The flotilla separated before morning and the jolly-boat was never seen again. In the life-boat was the captain's dog, and they killed and ate it the second day. That night four men died of the

cold and were thrown overboard, after being stripped of their clothes to cover the living. The third day the boat got among the ice, and they allayed their thirst by sucking pieces broken off the bergs. That night seven more died and, being stripped, were consigned to the deep. After this the narrative is a blank. On the seventh day the schooner "Victor" sighted the boat, and, bearing down on her, found four frost-bitten wretches alive, while the mutilated corpses which shared the skiff testified to the fact that the starving, freezing survivors had kept the vital spark alive by the last desperate resort of cannibalism. They were landed at St. Pierre, and two days later the schooner "Eugene" brought in three survivors of the dory's crew, who had prolonged existence only by the same dreadful alternative. All seven had such badly frosted feet that these extremities had to be amputated, and five patients succumbed to the knife, only two surviving to tell

the tale of this dreadful outcome of a marine disaster.

No discovery or invention relating to maritime matters would be of as great benefit to the shipping world as a contrivance which would give timely warning of the proximity of icebergs. Bells, whistles, lights, rockets and other devices have been provided for, protecting ships against colliding with one another, and now we are assured that wireless telegraph will soon be enlisted for the same object. This, if it succeeds, should make running through fog as devoid of danger as speeding across a cloudless sea-except for the bergs. But, until this peril has been eliminated, the passage of the North Atlantic will be attended by an element of danger which must compel the greatest precaution on the part of seafarers and occasionally bring about a disaster like some of the foregoing, in spite of the utmost vigilance of shipmasters and men. McClure's Magazine.