4.  Persistent little waves!  After a dash, singly, all around, upon the common enemy, as if by some silent agreement underwater, they would all rush on at once, with their loudest roar and shaggiest foam, and overwhelm poor bear so completely that nothing less might be expected than to behold him broken in four quarters, and floating helplessly asunder.  Mistaken spectators!  Although, by his momentary rolling and plunging, he was evidently aroused, yet neither Bruin nor his burrow was at all the worse for all the wear and washing.

5.  The deep fluting, the wrinkled folds, and cavities, over and through which the green and silvery water rushed back into the sea, rivaled the most exquisite sculpture.  And nature not only gives her marbles, with the finest lines, the most perfect lights and shades, she colors them also.  She is no monochromist, but polychroic, imparting such touches of dove tints, emerald, and azure as she bestows upon her gems and skies.

6.  We are bearing up under the big berg as closely as we dare.  To our delight, what we have been wishing and watching for is actually taking place:  loud explosions, with heavy falls of ice, followed by the cataract-like roar, and the high, thin seas, wheeling away beautifully crested with sparkling foam.  If it is possible, imagine the effect upon the beholder:  this precipice of ice, with tremendous cracking, is falling toward us with a majestic and awful motion.

7.  Down sinks the long water line into the black deep; down go the porcelain crags and galleries of glassy sculpture—­a speechless and awful baptism.  Now it pauses, and returns:  up rise sculptures and crags streaming with the shining white brine; up comes the great encircling line, followed by things new and strange—­crags, niches, balconies, and caves; up, up, it rises, higher and higher still, crossing the very breast of the grand ice, and all bathed with rivulets of gleaming foam.  Over goes the summit, ridge, pinnacles, and all, standing off obliquely in the opposite air.  Now it pauses in its upward roll:  back it comes again, cracking, cracking, cracking, “groaning out harsh thunder” as it comes, and threatening to burst, like a mighty bomb, into millions of glittering fragments.  The spectacle is terrific and magnificent.  Emotion is irrepressible, and peals of wild hurrah burst forth from all.

Definitions.—­1.  Cone, a solid body having a circular base, from which it tapers gradually to a point. 2.  Swells, waves. 3.  Se-ren’i-ty, quietness, calmness. 5.  Ex’qui-site, exceedingly nice, giving rare satisfaction.  Sculp’ture, carved work.  Mon’o-chro-mist, one who paints in a single color.  Pol-y-chro’ic, given to the use of many colors. 7.  Pin’na-cles, high, spirelike points.  Ob-lique’ly, slantingly.  Ir-re-press’i-ble, not to be restrained.

Notes—­Only about one eighth of an iceberg appears above the surface of the water.  When one side of it grows heavier than another, through unequal melting and the action of the waves, the whole mass rolls over in the water in the manner so well described in this lesson.