For five days and a half, it seemed quite useless and hopeless to alter
the ship's course so as to stand out of the way of this ice. I made what
southing I could; but, all that time, we were beset by it. Mrs.
Atherfield after standing by me on deck once, looking for some time in an
awed manner at the great bergs that surrounded us, said in a whisper, "O!
Captain Ravender, it looks as if the whole solid earth had changed into
ice, and broken up!" I said to her, laughing, "I don't wonder that it
does, to your inexperienced eyes, my dear." But I had never seen a
twentieth part of the quantity, and, in reality, I was pretty much of her
opinion.

However, at two p.m. on the afternoon of the sixth day, that is to say,
when we were sixty-six days out, John Steadiman who had gone aloft, sang
out from the top, that the sea was clear ahead. Before four p.m. a
strong breeze springing up right astern, we were in open water at sunset.
The breeze then freshening into half a gale of wind, and the Golden Mary
being a very fast sailer, we went before the wind merrily, all night.

I had thought it impossible that it could be darker than it had been,
until the sun, moon, and stars should fall out of the Heavens, and Time
should be destroyed; but, it had been next to light, in comparison with
what it was now. The darkness was so profound, that looking into it was
painful and oppressive--like looking, without a ray of light, into a
dense black bandage put as close before the eyes as it could be, without
touching them. I doubled the look-out, and John and I stood in the bow
side-by-side, never leaving it all night. Yet I should no more have
known that he was near me when he was silent, without putting out my arm
and touching him, than I should if he had turned in and been fast asleep
below. We were not so much looking out, all of us, as listening to the