find a tid-bit, when crack went the ice, like a
monstrous big pane of glass, with a running
rumble like the roar of a thousand cannon let off
one after another. We could hear it growling
away for miles into the darkness. The moon was
just going down. The shark soon left the whale,
for the bit of ice on which our prog was tilted
over like a dust-cart, and shot its load into the
sea. We were too busy looking after our lives to
have any time to look after that. Two of our
four boats were cracked like walnut-shells by the
big lumps of ice that were jolting about everywhere. It was as much as ever we could do to
get off our lump safely — the four crews into two
boats; it danced up and down, this side and that,
like a cork upon the swell. And then we had
only starlight to guide us as we pulled back to
the ship, with broken ice on every side threatening
each moment to stave us in. I didn’t see him
that night, but three of our fellows did. They
say he chased us back, jumping from block to
block as if they were only stepping-stones across
a brook.
“He was seen once more big like that. The ship was frozen in hard and fast again. You could see nothing but a hummocky plain of ice, with here and there a berg sticking up like a sharp horn, for miles all round—except in one place astern, where there was a little waterhole that glimmered in the moonlight like a great watching eye. We had covered in the quarter-deck with a sloping canvas roof, but a hole was left just above the taffrail to look out from. Well, one night when the Northern Lights were flashing about the sky like huge flapping flags of red, and yellow, and green, one of the boys was looking out through this opening, and by the waterhole he saw Galt standing, as tall as a fir-tree. He had the fingers and the thumb of his left hand spread out as he had when he died, and with his right forefinger he counted them off one by one. Then down he went into the waterhole as the play-actors drop through the stage, and the next morning it was frozen up.
“On the night of the fourth day after he had been thus seen, he was seen again, the same size as he was when alive, walking round and round the ship, laughing and pointing. One, two, three, four he counted on his left hand, then shut it all up except the little finger, and kept lunging through the gloom with that. We knew what he meant next day.
“A berg twice as high as the one we saw at noon came with a jar against the floe, and shivered it for miles. The ice about the ship of course broke up and began a devil’s dance, but as the bits weren’t very big, and she was regularly cased with rope-fenders, she might have got over that if the berg hadn’t borne down upon her as straight as if it had been steered. On it came, never once falling off a point. You may fancy what a funk we were in! We bundled clothes and blankets, pork and biscuit into the boats, and were over the side in a twinkling, pulling for dear life, and fending off the little lumps that came walloping up against us as well as we could with the boat-hooks. Two poor frost-bitten fellows couldn’t leave their berths, and the skipper swore, come what might, he’d stick by the ship. We saw him run forward and hoist the jib all by himself, to get some way on her, and then the berg came between, and we never saw any more of him or the poor old.
And may I never taste grog again if I didn’t see on the berg, alongside of Galt and a foreign-looking woman, the — .”
Whom he saw, and how Chips and his comrades got home, we did not hear; for just then a shrill voice from the forecastle — echoed shrilly along the deck — sang out in tremulous haste, “Ice on the weather-bow!” and the chief officer, in his rushing route forwards, put in his snow-roofed visage at the cabin -door, and bellowed to his colleague, “Jackson, turn out!” The cabin was soon cleared, and seeing, as we did, this second monster solemnly glide past us, so near that we could plainly make out the foam of the black billows breaking on its dully glimmering sides, we may, perhaps, be excused if we gave more credence than we should have afforded in less excited moments to Chips’s Ghost Story.
Richard Rowe.
WOMEN’S WORK.
The question of how to find a greater amount of remunerative work for educated women is one which involves many difficulties; but it is at the same time becoming so necessary, and is now so nobly advocated, that apology can scarcely be needed for any attempt to throw light upon this complicated subject.
In the first place, it may be asked, what would the country gain by introducing women into any of those departments already filled — and more than filled — by men? Well might the accountant and the clerk complain, should women attempt to “push them from their stools.” Where, then, is this remunerative occupation to be found, for the want of which so many educated women are now compelled, without inclination and without qualifications for teaching, to offer themselves as candidates for an employment which, above all others, requires the entire devotion of the heart, as well as the head.
Anxious, as all who are interested in this question must be, to engage the attention of enlightened women on behalf especially of those of their own class who from stress of circumstances may be looking for remunerative employment, we would venture to inquire whether some plan could not be devised by which women of the privileged classes might assist in promoting the good of this portion of the community without any loss or trouble to themselves. We allude to women’s work, or perhaps it would be speaking more to the point to say ladies' work. That ladies do work, and that most industriously and patiently, how many an elaborate and beautiful piece of embroidery bears evidence; to say nothing of work in coloured wool, not always, perhaps, quite so beautiful. It seems almost a necessity of woman’s nature that she should work; and in all ages of the world, at least down to the present times, some of the most elaborate and exquisite kinds of work have been executed by women of the higher ranks. The beautiful and accomplished Marguerite d’Angoulême, sister of Francis I., was