CHAPTER XX. “UNMERCIFUL DISASTER” In the morning, after breakfast, it was decided that the men should begin to dig a sloping bed which would allow the Halbrane to slide to the foot of the iceberg. Would that Heaven might grant success to the operation, for who could contemplate without terror having to brave the severity of the austral winter, and to pass six months under such conditions as ours on a vast iceberg, dragged none could tell whither? Once the winter had set in, none of us could have escaped from that most terrible of fates—dying of cold. At this