The old man seemed wandering a little.
“I would sleep now,” he added. “To-morrow—to-morrow.”
There was a strange light in Magnus’s eye next day when he joined the search party on deck, and a strange flush on his cheek that seemed to bode no good.
“I’ll see my boy,” he kept repeating to himself, as he led the way on shore. “I’ll see my boy.”
He walked so fast that his younger companions could hardly keep pace with him.
Along the shore and upwards through a glen, round hills and rocks, by many a devious path, he led them on and on, till they stood at last at the foot of a tall perpendicular cliff, with, close beside it, a spar or flagstaff.
They knew now that Magnus had not been raving, that they were no old man’s dream, these mammoth caves, but a glorious reality.
“Quick, quick,” cried Magnus, pointing to a spot at the foot of the spar. “Clear away the snow.”
Our heroes were hardly prepared for the sight that met their eyes, as soon as Magnus had been obeyed, for there, encased in a block of crystal ice, lay the form of a youth of probably sixteen summers, dressed in the blue uniform of a Norwegian sailor, with long fair hair floating over his shoulders. Time had wrought no change on the face; this lad, though buried for twenty years, seemed even now only in a gentle slumber, from which a word or touch might awake him.
“My boy! my boy!” was the cry of the old man, as he knelt beside the grave, kissed the cold ice, and bedewed it with his tears. “Look up, look up; ’tis your father that is bending over you. But no, no, no; he’ll never speak nor smile again. Oh! my boy, my boy!”