This from the man who was swinging high aloft in the crow’s-nest.
The mate went into the foretop to have a look at it through his glass.
One glance was enough.
“This is no land,” he told the skipper, “but a huge iceberg, that must have floated very far indeed out of its course.”
Then all hands crowded the deck to feast their eyes on the strange sight.
Not a soul on board this ship that had not beheld ice in every shape seen in high Northern altitudes, but none so remarkable in formation as this giant of the Southern seas.
CHAPTER III
FIRST ADVENTURES ON THE ICE
When men have been at sea for months and months, catching hardly e’er a blink of the shore, and seeing day by day only the faces and forms of their shipmates, or exchanging passing signals with some other ocean wanderer like the vessel on which they stand, any unusual sight serves to excite them and render them happy for the time being.
But this great iceberg was far indeed from a usual sight. How it had become detached from the vast sea-wall far farther south and floated northwards, almost into the latitude of Kerguelen itself, was, of course, a matter of mere conjecture. The currents of the oceans and the winds had doubtless drifted it hither and thither, for months, if not years; seas had beaten against its sheer and lofty sides, and hollowed strange arches therein; but the everlasting snows that covered it, and rose into cones and peaks high above, were probably as white now as, or even whiter than, when it first broke loose and became a rover on the ocean’s breast. And the very currents that had wafted it thither might in time carry it south again, to join its fellows, and tell the strange story of its wanderings and all the marvels it had seen.
The description of an iceberg of this size, or of any size, in fact, is one of the most difficult and unsatisfactory tasks that an author can attempt.