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wild glare of the battle-lanterns, I feel as I have never felt before,
although I have been all my life a dealer in antiquities, and have
imbibed the shadows of fallen columns at Balbec, and Tadmor, and
Persepolis, until my very soul has become a ruin.
*
* * * *
When I look around me I feel ashamed of my former apprehensions. If I
trembled at the blast which has hitherto attended us, shall I not stand
aghast at a warring of wind and ocean, to convey any idea of which
the words tornado and simoom are trivial and ineffective? All in the
immediate vicinity of the ship is the blackness of eternal night, and a
chaos of foamless water; but, about a league on either side of us, may
be seen, indistinctly and at intervals, stupendous ramparts of ice,
towering away into the desolate sky, and looking like the walls of the
universe.
*
* * * *
As I imagined, the ship proves to be in a current; if that appellation
can properly be given to a tide which, howling and shrieking by the
white ice, thunders on to the southward with a velocity like the
headlong dashing of a cataract.
*
* * * *
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