“On the weather-beam,” answered the man aloft, who still spoke in a voice which sounded as if he had been greatly startled. “It’s rising rapidly every moment, sir, out of the water.”
“The fellow must be blind!” exclaimed Captain Dinks. “There is no land there in that direction, if I know it. He must be taking one of those big icebergs for an island; that’s about the matter. Hanged if I don’t go up and see for myself!”
Running down the poop ladder, the captain soon started up the shrouds on the port side towards the maintop where the lookout man was stationed. It was not Karl Ericksen this time, whose word he would have implicitly taken, but Bill Moody, one of the worst of the crew, and who, it may be remembered, had already evinced an unsailorlike spirit by his insubordination on an occasion when the pluck and endurance of everyone required to be tested. From this fact alone, Captain Dinks was the less inclined to trust him.
The captain, however, found mounting the ratlines not so easy a task as he might have imagined, for the rigging was all frozen hard and as unbending as iron; but he persevered unflinchingly, and disdaining to creep through the “lubber’s hole,” climbed over the top in the usual sailor’s way, although he puffed and panted a good deal when he got there, which proved to him that the flesh he had gained on his plump little person, since he had been a youngster and first shinned up the rigging, had not improved his climbing powers.
“Now, where’s this wonderful land of your’s!” he asked, as soon as he got alongside of Bill Moody, taking his glass out of his pocket and adjusting the focus ready for action.
“There,” answered the man surlily, pointing towards the north-east, where a faint blue bank seemed to rise out of the ocean above and beyond the ice-fields. It could be seen with the naked eye to be of a different colour to even the most distant bergs, the distinction being quite marked.
“By Jove, the man’s right!” ejaculated Captain Dinks with surprise.
“I knew I were,” said Bill Moody in a bragging sort of way. “I think I can see a hole in a ladder as well as most people; and if that ain’t land, why, I’ll eat it.”
“There, that will do,” interposed the captain to stop any further remarks, while he proceeded to inspect the hazy object with keen attention for some minutes, after which he replaced his glass in his pocket and prepared to descend to the deck again.
“Keep a sharp look-out,” he said to Moody as he disappeared over the side of the top, “and sing out, as soon as we get any nearer, whether you can see a line of breakers at the foot of the island; for island it is, sure enough!”