}
stretching so far each way that, when described, it was too
late to alter the helm. Its giant shape filled the foreground,
towering high above the masts, grim and gaunt and ghastly,
immovable as the adamantine buttresses of a frowning seaboard,
while the liner lurched and staggered like a wounded
thing in agony as her engines slowly drew her back from the
rampart against which she had flung herself.
She was headed for St. John's at slow speed, so as not to
strain the bulkhead too much, and arrived there thirty-six
hours later. That little port--the crippled ship's hospital--
has seen many a strange sight come in from the sea, but never
a more astounding spectacle than that which the Arizona
presented the Sunday forenoon she entered there.
"Begob, captain!" said the pilot, as he swung himself over
the rail. "I've heard of carrying coals to Newcastle, but this
is the first time I've seen a steamer bringing a load of ice into
St. John's."
They are a grim race, these sailors, and, the danger over,
the captain's reply was: "We were lucky, my man, that we
didn't all go to the bottom in an ice box."
DOZENS OF SHIPS PERISH
But to the one wounded ship that survives collision with a
berg, a dozen perish.
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