I have seen the appearance of the false suns--or sun-dogs as the sailors call them--so near that the lowest one would seem to fall between me and a snow-bank twenty feet away, so near that by moving my head backward and forward I could shut it out or bring it into view.
This was the nearest I ever came to finding the pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow.
On the night of November 12, the ice of the channel pack, which for more than two months had seemed unmindful of our intrusive presence, arose in wrath and tried to hurl us upon the equally inhospitable shore.
All that evening the wind had been gradually increasing in violence, and about half-past eleven the ship began to complain, creaking, groaning and muttering to herself.

I lay in my bunk and listened to the wind in the humming rigging, while the moonlight, shining through the porthole, filled the cabin with dim shadows.

Toward midnight, mingled with the noises of the ship, another and more ominous sound became audible--the grinding of the ice in the channel outside.
I threw on my clothes and went on deck.

The tide was running flood, and the ice was moving resistlessly past the point of the cape.

The nearer ice, between us and the outer pack, was humming and groaning with the steadily increasing pressure.