“Brave words, my foster-son,” replied McBain, grasping Allan’s hand, “and the spirit of these words gained for the English nation the victory in a thousand fights.”
“Besides, you know,” added Rory, looking unusually serious, “it is sure to come right in the end.”
The Arrandoon, wonderful to relate, had now gained the extreme altitude of 86 degrees north latitude, and although winter was rapidly approaching, the sea was still a comparatively open one. Nor was the cold very intense; the frosts that had fled away during the short Arctic summer had not yet returned. The sea between the bergs and floes was everywhere calm; they had passed beyond the region of fogs, and, it would almost seem, beyond the storm regions as well, for the air was windless.
So on they steamed steadily though slowly, never relaxing their vigilance; so careful, indeed, in this respect was McBain, that the man in the chains as well as the “nest hand” were changed every hour, and only old and tried sailors were permitted to go on duty on these posts.
“Land ahead!” was the shout one day from the nest. The day, be it remembered, was now barely an hour long.
“Land ahead on the port bow!”
“What does it look like, Mr Stevenson?” cried the captain.
The mate had run up at the first hail.
“I can just see the tops of a few hills, sir,” was the reply, “towering high over the icebergs.”
The Arrandoon bore away for this strange land. In three hours’ time they were lying off one of the dreariest and most desolate-looking islands it has ever been the lot of mariners to behold. It looked like an island of some worn-out planet, whose internal fires have gone for ever out, from which life has long since fled, which possesses no future save the everlasting night of silence and death.