noon
Still , even such surface as the spars and rigging offered to the breeze helped our progress . We were but a very little berg , nay , not a berg , but rather a sheet of ice lying indifferently flat upon the sea , and , as I believe , without much depth . Our spars and gear were as if the ice itself were rigged as a ship , and then there was the height of the hull besides to offer to the breeze a tolerable resistance for its offices of propulsion . In this way I explain our progress ; but whatever the cause , certain it was that our bed of ice was fairly under weigh , and at noon the island of ice bore at least half a league distant from us , and we had opened the sea broadly past its northern cape . I have often diverted myself with wondering what sort of impression the posture of our schooner would have made on the minds of sailors sighting us from their deck . We looked to be floating out of water , and mariners who regard the devil as a conjuror must have accepted us as one of his pet inventions . The many icebergs which encumbered the sea filled me with anxiety .