‘When I went to my cabin, I was not disposed at once to go to rest. I knelt on my sofa, so as to be able to look out from my port-hole on the ocean and its numerous floating fragments of ice, seen in the starlight. Not only was the sense of sight exercised, but that of hearing. Nine times I thought that I heard the keel grate against the ice. I may possibly be mistaken in the number of times; but the noise was distinct, and its nature not to be mistaken. At a short distance--it did not look a hundred yards--the clear, smooth sea appeared to be skirted by a tall hedge. It was not _land_, for occasionally I saw a light gleam through it. I asked a seaman afterwards what it was,--it was, as I suspected, a bank of fog between us and the coast of Newfoundland.