“Forward, then,” cried the captain, shouldering his gun; and they dropped down on to the drift of sand below her, walked round by the bow, and, keeping a sharp look-out for game, tramped away northward, but bearing for the cliff, where at one point a glacier came right down, and at its foot the snow lay in a long slope; not soft, flocculent snow fresh fallen, but a collection of hard pellets, more resembling a gigantic heap of the remains seen after a very heavy hail-storm. But it was suggestive to Skene of the mountain-side far away beyond the Clyde at home, and with a sharp bark he dashed at it, thrust his nose in the cool, rounded fragments, and then cast himself upon his side to plough his way through them, sniffling and snuffling the while, as if he were trying to find snow-buried sheep after a winter’s gale.
“Goot tog, goot tog,” muttered Andrew, who carried the spare rifle, and he shifted it from one shoulder to the other. “Ah, laddie,” he whispered to Steve, “how it ’minds me o’ bonnie Scotland.”
They tramped on, noting flock after flock, thousands upon thousands in fact, of sea-birds, sitting in rows upon the ledges of the cliffs many of them, while others flew seaward, wheeling round and retiring; so plentiful were they—auks, puffins, guillemots, and tern—that the men might easily have been loaded with the spoil. But these birds were not tempting from a food point of view; and though Steve was anxious for a trial, the captain had no mind to stop while the boy ran risks by climbing to the ledges in search of the eggs that no doubt were there in thousands; so they kept on, looking vainly for ducks or geese.
“There,” said the captain at last, “we have nothing to gain by tramping along here. We know that if we keep on we shall come to the ice cliff, and be turned back. It is impossible to get up here and go inward without chipping a way up that glacier, to find more snow, so let’s go back.”
“Without a single bird?” cried the doctor in a disappointed tone.
“Well, another hundred yards or so, then,” said the captain; “but I don’t think we shall get anything. We want the mouth of a river or a lagoon from which the ice has just melted.”
“What’s the matter with the dog?” said Steve suddenly, after they had walked on for another ten minutes; for Skene had suddenly seemed as if he had conceived it to be his duty to turn himself into as near a resemblance to an arctic wolf as he possibly could. His ears were laid back, his eyes lurid, his teeth bared, and the thick ruff above his neck and shoulders set up, bristling and waving as if swept by a strong current of air.
“Look out, gentlemen; he scents game,” whispered Johannes.
“Stop!” said the captain. “It was near here that we saw the bears.”
“No, no, a mile farther,” said the doctor.