“All right, sir,” said Captain Dinks laughing, “I’ll take your word for it; though an iceberg hereabouts, to my thinking, is a rather rum visitor this time of year, and I’ll believe it when I see it!”
However, the captain was wrong again.
Just before dark, the look-out in the maintop reported something ahead, which presently turned out to be an enormous iceberg, fortunately far away to leeward out of the course of the ship. It was an immense irregular mass several miles long and of great height, appearing to reach up into the clouds above as it heaved up and down on the heavy rolling sea; and its top and points, covered with snow, stood out distinctly against the dark horizon.
“Ah, we are well away from that fellow!” said Mr Meldrum rubbing his hands; but his congratulations were cut short in a moment by the look-out man forward—the Norwegian sailor, who as an old whaler was accustomed to Antarctic sights and sounds—shouting out that there was field-ice ahead, and that from the crashing of the floes he thought the ship must be near the pack.
“Take in sail at once,” said Mr Meldrum, “and keep a sharper look-out than ever. If the vessel runs against the ice woe betide us all!”
Chapter Thirteen.
“Land Ho!”
“Let go the mizzentop-sail halliards, and man the fore staysail down-haul!” shouted out Captain Dinks the moment Mr Meldrum had spoken; and, the helm being put down at the same time, the ship was again brought head to wind, almost sooner than it has taken to describe the operation. However, as it was observed after a little while that the vessel drifted so rapidly to leeward, through the mere force of the wind on her exposed hull and remaining spars, not to speak of the wash of the sea, and thus ran in quite as great danger of colliding with the ice as if she had been going ahead, the fore staysail, reefed into the most attenuated proportions, was set again—so that the ship might be under steerage way and be able to avoid, under judicious control, the numerous small bergs that now hove in sight like miniature islands in every direction, making the navigation perilous in the extreme.