“That one thing alone was worth the whole trip to get here,” asserted Jimmy, and even Hector joined in with a series of barks as though he also wanted to show his approval.
“Seems to be unanimous,” observed the captain. “I don’t wonder, for though it’s my business to hate the icebergs, track them down, destroy them, I have to admit their beauty.”
“Do you often see so many in a flock?” asked Joe.
“Not often,” was the reply. “Though as many as a hundred and twenty-five have occasionally been seen together. Sometimes a peculiar twist of the current throws them together, and then they move along like a regiment. More often, however, they seem to prefer to flock by themselves or in small groups.”
“It looks as though they were bringing down all the ice there is in the Arctic,” remarked Joe.
“There’s plenty more where they came from,” laughed the captain. “As a matter of fact, they don’t come from the Arctic ice floes. They’re part of the ice cap that breaks off from the coast of Greenland. And they’re not composed entirely of ice, although they appear to be. When they break away, they bring with them hundreds of tons of dirt and gravel. That gradually drops away as they get into the warmer waters, and sinks to the bottom of the sea.”
“That berg over there seems to be the grand-daddy of them all,” said Bob.
“It is pretty big,” admitted the captain. “But it’s nothing near as big as some of them. One of them that was reported a little while ago by an ice-patrol boat, was estimated to contain thirty-six million tons of ice.”
“There comes a vessel!” exclaimed Bob, whose keen eyes had descried a hull a long distance off and coming rapidly in their direction.
The captain leveled his glasses upon the approaching steamer.