To their left, and extending toward the north, there was the island; but apparently, too, it did not go very far in the latter direction, but trended round, as if that were the termination of the island. Southward they could not make out its extent.
“Well, Handscombe, what do you say to landing and examining the wreck?”
It was the captain who spoke, and the doctor and Steve both echoed his last word.
“Wreck?”
“Yes; didn’t you see it. There, high up yonder, this side of the sharp point which runs out to the east. I daresay that was the cause of the wreck. Here, take the glass.”
He handed his telescope to the doctor, who made a long inspection, and then passed it to Steve, who took it with hands trembling from eagerness to view what was in all probability the remains of his uncle’s vessel, whose return had been so anxiously awaited all through the past winter, but in the spring given up as being ice-bound somewhere in the north.
Yes, there was the hull of a good-sized ship fast on the rocks, and with decks ripped up by the waves, so that, as the vessel lay over on its port side, Steve could peer with the glass right into the hold between the deck beams. There was the stump of the bowsprit pointing upward toward the stony cliffs, but the masts were completely gone, and an ugly gap in the port side suggested that it would not be long before the timbers quite disappeared.
Steve handed the glass back with a sigh, and his face contracted.
“No, no; don’t look like that,” said the captain gently; “we don’t know that this is the Ice Blink.”
“You are saying that to comfort me,” replied the boy sadly. “It must be.”