Nancy couldn't say she had noticed; there had been sausages for supper, father had killed a pig.
'But if nobody lives there how do they know about it?' she asked.
'Because brave men have gone there to see,' said Godfrey, with the eager light coming into his eyes. 'Aunt Betty says that country is full of the graves of brave men who have gone up there and died away in the dark and the cold.'
'Poor things!' sighed Nancy. 'I daresay now their friends will have put up nice handsome stones over their graves, won't they?'
'No, there aren't any stones,' said Godfrey; 'Aunt Betty says their deeds are their monuments.'
Nancy looked as if she thought such monuments rather unsatisfactory.
'Father put up a nice stone with a vase a-top of it to his great-uncle,' she remarked, 'and the captain's grandfather he's got two angels crying and a skull at the bottom; it's a nice handsome grave, that is.'
They had reached the pond by this time, a piece of dark water over-hung by willows and covered with black ice, which had been broken at one end for the cattle to drink. Godfrey began at once to invent.
'We'll put the Victory here,' he said, launching his boat into the dark hole; 'this is the last piece of open water, Nance, and from here we must just take to the ice, you and I, and leave the crew to take care of the ship till we get back. Take your rifle, I see there are Polar bears prowling over there among the icebergs.'
'Where?' asked Nancy, rather alarmed.