Just then the ice-master, who was keeping watch on the crossbars of the topsails, signalled a floating mass on the starboard, at about fifteen miles distance before the wind.
"An iceberg here!" cried the doctor.
Shandon pointed his telescope in the direction indicated, and confirmed the pilot's announcement.
"That is curious!" said the doctor.
"What! you are astonished at last!" said the commander, laughing.
"I am surprised, but not astonished," answered the doctor, laughing; "for the brig Ann, of Poole, from Greenspond, was caught in 1813 in perfect ice-fields, in the forty-fourth degree of north latitude, and her captain, Dayernent, counted them by hundreds!"
"I see you can teach us something, even upon that subject."
"Very little," answered Clawbonny modestly; "it is only that ice has been met with in even lower latitudes."
"I knew that already, doctor, for when I was cabinboy on board the war-sloop Fly——"
"In 1818," continued the doctor, "at the end of March, almost in April, you passed between two large islands of floating ice under the forty-second degree of latitude."