The effect of the scene on the men was remarkable. They stared in silent wonder, not unmixed with a kind of superstitious awe.
At long last clouds banked up and hid the sun, then, as if the enchanter had ceased to wave his wand, the spectres fled, and only blue-grey shadows remained to mark the places where the caves of beauty erst had spangled and shone.
On sailed the ship, on and on.
At last, one night, the mate on watch noticed a bright glare of light far away to the southward and east, and reported it to the captain.
Though it was long past midnight, the two men of the Resolute were roused and brought on deck.
The light, they said, had often been seen. It was that from a burning mountain, and was nothing now to what it sometimes appeared. Just here, too, they averred the wreck would be found.
So the San Salvador lay to till daybreak.
Both Fred and Captain Cawdor were on deck long before the first faint flush of dawn. But neither then nor when the sun crimsoned the waters to the east were any signs of human life to be seen.
Just two hours afterwards, however, as Fred and his captain sat at breakfast, the mate's watch being on deck, they heard that officer's footsteps rapidly advancing along the quarter-deck. Immediately after the skylight was opened, and the mate sang out:
"Something large and dark lying on top of the snow in the bay down here, sir."