"You right, master," said Regnar. "We go to-morrow to berg; see great ways from there, if we can get up. 'Nother thing we ought to do—move off this floe before next gale, else get house broken, and lose many things."
"Pooh!" said Waring, carelessly; "this berg would last a month yet."
"I risk this hice, more'n twenty, tirty feet tick. Sea no break this up."
Orloff's eyes flashed, and he seemed about to make some angry reply, but with a visible effort to restrain himself, signed to La Salle to follow him, and went out of the hut. La Salle found him on the summit of the lookout, gazing out over the star-lit sea.
"I was angry, and came near forgetting the part I play," said he, bitterly, in French; "but they know nothing of ice-lore, and I should not be angry at them for believing that this heavy bit of ice, although not as large as those around us, is equally as safe."
"And why is it not?" asked La Salle.
"Because," answered the lad, "this floe is of snow-ice, probably pierced by dozens of hidden cavities. I fancied the other night that I heard a ripple of water beneath me, as I have heard it in winter when seeking the hidden streams beneath the glaciers, but I did not hear it again, and may have been mistaken."
"Well, we are safe, I suppose, as long as we lie deep in the pack."
Regnar smiled pityingly.
"Do you see the kind of ice which surrounds us now—those heavy floes, hard, flinty, and widespread, and that berg, gigantic, and almost as hard as glass? Well, if we have a heavy blow from the north-west, we shall be jammed between the ice now resting on the Magdalens and those Greenland monsters yonder, and if there is a weak spot in our berg—"