JACK MASON’S VISIT TO THE NORTH SEA
If you should go a great way north,
you would find it very cold. The further you
go north, the colder it is. I went so far that
way one time, that I got almost frozen. The ship
I sailed in came close to an iceberg once, and we
all thought for a while that the ship would strike
the iceberg. If it had struck, it would have been
broken all in pieces, and we should have been drowned
or frozen, every one of us. God was kind and
good to us, though. The wind was blowing very
hard, and right toward the iceberg. But just
as we had got almost up to it, the wind changed, and
blew us away from it.
But I forgot that you do not know
what an iceberg is. It is a great hill of ice.
In the North Sea, these ice-hills are often as high
as your church, and sometimes a great deal higher.
These hills of ice are floating along the water there,
and when it is foggy or dark, the sailors cannot always
see them. So sometimes the ship strikes them,
and is dashed to pieces. Sometimes it gets between
two of these ice-hills, and gets crushed, as if it
was a little boat. Then the men in the ship have
to get out, and jump upon one of the ice-hills.
But they are pretty likely to be frozen to death then.