Then we felt more keenly than before the dangers which threaten every expedition to the Antarctic zone.
"What about Hearne ?" said a voice.
Martin Holt pronounced the name at a moment when there was general silence.

Had the sealing-master been crushed to death in the narrow part of the hold where he was shut up?
West rushed towards the schooner, hoisted himself on board by means of a rope hanging over the bows, and gained the hatch which gives access to that part of the hold.
We waited silent and motionless to learn the fate of Hearne, although the evil spirit of the crew was but little worthy of our pity.
And yet, how many of us were then thinking that if we had heeded his advice, and if the schooner had taken the northern course, a whole crew would not have been reduced to take refuge on a drifting ice-mountain! I scarcely dared to calculate my own share of the vast responsibility, I who had so vehemently insisted on the prolongation of the voyage.
At length the mate reappeared on deck and Hearne followed him! By a miracle, neither the bulkheads, nor the ribs, nor the planking had yielded at the place where the sealing-master was confined.
Hearne rejoined his comrades without opening his lips, and we had no further trouble about him.
Towards six o'clock in the morning the fog cleared off, owing to a marked fall in the temperature.

We had no longer to do with completely frozen vapour, but had to deal with the phenomenon called frost-rime, which often occurs in these high latitudes.

Captain Len Guy recognized it by the quantity of prismatic threads, the point following the wind which roughened the light ice-crust deposited on the sides ot the iceberg.

Navigators know better than to confound this frost-rime with the hoar frost of the temperate zones, which only freezes when it has been deposited on the surface of the soil.
We were now enabled to estimate the size of the solid mass on which we clustered like flies on a sugar-loaf, and the schooner, seen from below, looked no bigger than the yawl of a trading vessel.
This iceberg of between three and four hundred fathoms in circumference measured from 130 to 140 feet high.