HAIR-RAISING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 128, 2 June 1939, Page 7

HAIR-RAISING.

ICE-MASS ATTACKED.

i" SEEMED SHEER MADNESS." AUSTRALIAN REPORTER'S JOB (From Our Own Correspondent.) MONTREAL, May 8. Attached to the '"Montreal Star"' in the Empire Press Union's interchange of Empire journalists. R. C. Marriott, a native of Queensland. Australia, admits his Imir "stood on end" as he covered an assignment on tlie icebreaker X. B. McLean when she broke through the ice-barrier to free the harinjur of Montreal from winter's annual live-month «rip. Mr. Marriott wrote that as the vessel drew nearer and nearer the ice field he "wondered if the -kipper had taken leave of hie senses."'

'"This eeemed sheer madness," he said. "Here we were rushing at a (solid mass at nearly 20 miles an hour. I thought of home and <=unny Queensland and waited for the end.

"There was a elow crunching, crackling noise, a slight jolt as we slowed down after hitting the pack and then the bows rose—we surged forward. They dropped and rose again ae the boat slid to a standstill.

"We had taken our first bite and a good full-bodied bite it was. Two hundred feet we had slid on to that iee field and had .shattered it for ]"»(» feet on cither side like a "tone shatters a window. Great cracks sprayed out from the boat like black chain lightning on a sky of white.. S'owlv the<e cracks widened into crevice*, huge chunks broke off and disappeared for a moment, and then shot up out of the water, writhing and twisting as. though in mortal agony.

"The water was boiling around us the engine* were put full <=pee<i astern and w e slid back into the channel and backed down stream."'