“The water goes round behind those blocks, sir,” he said.
“But can you tell that with the naked eye, Johannes?”
“Yes, sir, clearly.”
The result was that a clear way was well traced out for the Hvalross right up to the rugged land with its mountains, not more than eight miles away, so that navigation would be perfectly easy at that moment. What it would be with the vast army of ice blocks advancing to invade the shores of the unknown land, it would be impossible to say.
All these facts were communicated bit by bit to the deck, with the consequence that the speed was increased, and the vessel went gliding on in and out amongst the floating fields of ice, while Steve stayed with his companion, who kept pointing out objects worthy of notice.
“Seals yonder,” he said, pointing to one low flat of snow-covered ice; and Steve brought the glass to bear upon the cluster of animals huddled up together.
“Yonder’s a bear, too,” said Johannes after a time.
“What eyes you have!” cried Steve. “I had not even seen that with the glass. Why, he’s on quite a small island of ice, all to himself. How easily we could get to him with a boat!”
“Yes, easily enough, sir; but this is no time for hunting,” said the Norseman. “While we are drifting onward with all this ice the danger is not great; but if we lay to while boats were out fishing we should soon be fast, and it might be months before we got free. There is only one thing to do now: get the ship into a safe haven. Then we can talk about hunting.”
“How long will it take us to get there?”