We were now close upon the point just behind which we expected to behold the iceberg.  The surf was sweeping the black reef that flanked the small cape, in the finest style,—­a beautiful dance of breakers of dazzling white and green.  As every stroke of the oars shot us forward, and enlarged our view of the field in which the ice was reposing, our hearts fairly throbbed with an excitement of expectation.  “There it is!” one exclaimed.  An instant revealed the mistake.  It was only the next headland in a fog, which unwelcome mist was now coming down upon us from the broad waters, and covering the very tract where the berg was expected to be seen.  Farther and farther out the long, strong sweep of the great oars carried us, until the depth of the bay between us and the next headland was in full view.  It may appear almost too trifling a matter over which to have had any feeling worth mentioning or remembering, but I shall not soon forget the disappointment, when from the deck of our barge, as it rose and sank on the large swells, we stood up and looked around and saw, that, if the iceberg, over which our very hearts had been beating with delight for twenty-four hours, was anywhere, it was somewhere in the depths of that untoward fog.  It might as well have been in the depths of the ocean.

While the pale cloud slept there, there was nothing left for us but to wait patiently where we were, or retreat.  We chose the latter.  C. gave the word to pull for the settlement at the head of the little bay just mentioned, and so they rounded the breakers on the reef, and we turned away for the second time, when the game was fairly ours.  Even the hardy fishermen, no lovers of “islands-of-ice,” as they call them, felt for us, as they read in our looks the disappointment, not to say a little vexation.  While on our passage in, we filled a half-hour with questions and discussions about that iceberg.

“We certainly saw it yesterday evening; and a soldier of Signal Hill told us that it had been close in at Torbay for several days.  And you, my man there, say that you had a glimpse of it last evening.  How happens it to be away just now?  Where do you think it is?”

“Indeed, Sir, he must be out in the fog, a mile or over.  De’il a bit can a man look after a thing in a fog, more nor into a snow-bank.  Maybe, Sir, he’s foundered; or he might be gone off to sea, altogether, as they sometimes do.”

“Well, this is rather remarkable.  Huge as these bergs are, they escape very easily under their old cover.  No sooner do we think we have them, than they are gone.  No jackal was ever more faithful to his lion, no pilot-fish to his shark, than the fog to its berg.  We will run in yonder and inquire about it.  We may get the exact bearing, and reach it yet, even in the fog.”

THE FISHERMAN’S.