“A berg!” cried Tom. “You mean an iceberg?”
“Sure,” replied the second mate. “Pretty sizeable one too.”
“Oh, let’s sail over and see it!” exclaimed Jim.
“Less we see of ’em the better it’ll suit me,” said the skipper who had been studying the berg. “But you’ll have a chance to see it all right. We’ll have to go out of our course if we don’t want to bump plumb into it.”
Rapidly the berg rose before the schooner, a massive mountain of ice, its summit carved and melted into spires, pinnacles and huge, overhanging shelves, steep precipitous sides rising from the wide hummocky base just above the waves and gleaming and shimmering with every color of the rainbow.
“Gee, isn’t it pretty!” cried Jim. “I never knew ice was so many colors. And look at those big caves in the sides.”
“And look—oh look, Jim!” exclaimed Tom. “There’s some one on it! See, right in front of that big green cave!”
“What in tarnation ye talkin’ of?” demanded Cap’n Pem. “Here, gimme them glasses.”
Adjusting the glasses, the old whaleman stared fixedly for a moment at the distant iceberg. “Some one on it!” he exclaimed. “Waal, I’ll be blowed if there beint—but ’tain’t no human critter. That there’s a whoppin’ big b’ar!”
“A bear?” cried Tom. “Hurrah! that’s all the better. Oh say, Captain Edwards, can’t we go over and shoot him?”