They dared not sleep for fear they would freeze before they awoke, and though the dread drowsiness that is the first symptom of freezing stole over them again and again, they fought it off grimly. Once both fell asleep at the same time in spite of all they could do, but the fast moving floe struck a large berg with a grinding, rending crash and startled them to the temporary safety of wakefulness. Had it not been for the wind break they had erected they would undoubtedly have frozen to death. As it was, they were forced to watch each other, to prevent sleep coming to both at the same time. Sometimes Dick pounded Sandy until his eyes opened, and again Sandy beat and shouted at Dick above the roar of the storm, and the crashing and grinding of ice.
Neither had the least idea where they were being driven to, they had even lost all sense of direction, every effort bent on keeping a spark of life burning in their numb bodies.
It seemed to the boys that the battle with the cold would never end, that they had floated in the storm for hours, when suddenly the floe came to a jarring stop, and a deluge of ice water rolled across it, almost washing Dick and Sandy from their position under the wind break.
“I wonder what we’ve hit!” Dick shouted hoarsely.
“It must be a berg,” Sandy cried in reply.
“But we aren’t moving at all,” Dick shouted back.
Believing they might have been washed ashore on some island, the boys braved the full force of the storm and staggered out of their wind break to investigate. The snow and spray almost blinded them, but at last they made out a huge mass of ice upon which the floe had lodged. It rose up for nearly fifty feet and withstood every charge of the gigantic waves that crashed against it.
Yet, in the brief period when the wind cleared the air of flying snow, they could see the swell of waves beyond the ice which was holding them.
“It’s a grounded berg!” Dick shouted at last, and Sandy and he fought their way back to the welcome shelter of their wind break.
“We must be pretty close to land,” Sandy opined.
“Yes, but there’s no telling how deep the water is here. The berg we’ve lodged on may extend down into the water for a hundred feet. There’s always more of a berg under water than there is above. We’ve got to stick it out until this storm blows over.”