The skipper glanced shoreward. “That’s a glacier,” he replied. “River of ice, like. They’re what make icebergs.”
“How on earth can they make icebergs?” asked Jim, studying the precipitous face of the glacier.
“Water cuts under ’em and they break off, and the pieces are the bergs,” explained the captain. “That’s what we call calving.”
“Well, it’s the prettiest colored thing I’ve ever seen,” declared Jim. “It’s for all the world like a giant opal and constantly changing. Gosh, it doesn’t look like any ice I ever saw.”
The Narwhal was now sailing close to the outer edge of the pack ice and a sharp lookout was kept for seals or whales. Then, rounding a jutting cape, the boys saw a deep blue fiord with a stupendous glacier leading down a great valley to the rocky beach. The mouth of the fiord was clear of ice, and so the Narwhal’s course was shifted, and she slipped into the dark shadows of the towering cliffs. The water, calm as a millpond, was deepest indigo, and upon it the rocky heights and the great glacier were reflected as in a burnished mirror. Fascinated, the boys were gazing at the beautiful picture when the lookout’s hail reached the deck. “Pod o’ seal over to wind’ard,” he shouted. “Close in shore!”
Captain Edwards sprang into the rigging, gazed in the direction indicated and leaped back to the deck. “Harps!” he announced. “We’ll have a try for ’em. Stand by to lower away the port boat. Mr. Kemp, you take charge, you’ve had more experience with them critters than any one else.”
“Can we go?” asked Tom.
“Guess you can,” responded the captain, “no danger sealin’.”
In a few moments the boat was in the water, the sealing clubs, with guns and rifles, were placed in readiness, and with a will the crew pulled toward the dark specks that marked the dozing, unsuspecting seals.
As they drew near shore, the mountains seemed to overhang the boat, and the face of the glacier loomed enormous against the background of the hills. Here and there, grounded on bars or shoals, were small bergs and one enormous one, with lofty pinnacles like the many spires of a great cathedral, was floating majestically near the head of the fiord. From the cliffs, where they stood in endless rows, the auks, guillemots, puffins, and cormorants gazed down and protested in raucous cries. Presently the boys could distinguish the seals—great brownish yellow creatures with dark harp-shaped markings on their backs—a hundred or more, drawn far up on the shore among the rotting cakes of ice and sleeping soundly in the warm summer sunshine.