PLAYING WITH AN ICEBERG.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XIII, Issue II, 14 July 1894, Page 47

PLAYING WITH AN ICEBERG.

A few years ago a French man-of-war was lying at anchor in Temple Bay, and the younger officers took it into their heads to amuse themselves with an iceberg, a mile or more distant in the straits. They would have a sumptuous picnic on the very top of it. All the warnings of the brown and simple fishermen went for nothing with these gentlemen who had seen the world.

It was a bright summer morning, and the jolly boat with a Hag went off to the berg. By twelve o’clock the colours were Hying from the top, and the wild midshipmen were revelling on the ice mountain. For two hours or more they hacked it and clambered over it. They frolicked and feasted, and laughed at the very thought of danger on this solid ice.

When, like thoughtless children, the young men had played themselves weary, they descended to their cockleshell of a boat and rowed away.

As if time and distance bad been measured on purpose for the men to view the scene in safety, the great iceberg lay silent until the boat was a certain distance off. Then, as if its heart had been volcanic fire, it burst with awful thunder, and filled the surrounding water with its ruins. Awed and subdued by the scene of destruction, and thrilled at their narrow escape from death, the picnickers returned to their ship. It was their first and last day of amusement with an iceberg.