“Yes; grand enough to crush up the Hvalross like an eggshell,” muttered the mate.
“Yes; but you’ll take care it does not!” cried Steve, smiling. “She would go to pieces on rocks, but you and the captain will mind that she does not.”
The mate’s grim, weary face brightened into a smile, and he clapped one of his fur-gloved hands on Steve’s shoulder.
“Bravo, boy!” he said. “It’s a fine thing to be your age, full of hope and confidence. Yes, we’ll do our best not to get crushed; but it’s a very awkward position to be in.”
“Why?” said Steve. “The storm’s over.”
“Yes, the storm’s over; but look where we are drifting north with all this. Suppose we come to the stationary ice, with all these great floes behind us?”
“Well, what then?”
“What then?” said the mate, with a laugh at this questioner’s innocence. “Why, the drifting ice behind us, pressed forward with a power of millions of tons, will force us against the fixed ice, and then we shall either be lifted right out of the water, or go, as I said, like an eggshell.”
“Ah! but that’s only what might happen,” said Steve. “I say, though, Mr Lowe, whereabouts are we? Not up by the North Pole?”
“No,” said the mate, smiling as he gave a look round, shading his eyes with his hand; “I don’t see it sticking up out of the snow. We’re not anywhere near the North Pole, but I can give a pretty shrewd guess as to where we are.”