While Tom and the others were giving way to excitement over the result to the flying boat of the shock it had undergone, Mr. Damon (when once the door in the hull was opened) leaped out and stared up the slope of the ice peak to see if he could again observe the curl of smoke which had been rising from that height as the flying boat passed over it.
“There is somebody up there. Bless my tortoise-shell glasses! there must be somebody up there. Smoke doesn’t come out of a hill of ice by any natural means, that is sure.”
But he did not see the smoke now. He called to Olaf Karofsen. He had picked up a few words of the Old Norse dialect much used by the people of the “back end” of Iceland, and the schooner captain spoke that language, too.
So the other Americans in the party did not understand what Mr. Damon and the captain were so excitedly talking about.
“What made that smoke, Captain?” demanded Mr. Damon.
“Fire,” declared the man promptly.
“And fire in an iceberg is not a common thing. Over there is the crevasse where we lost your poor brother and his boy. Bless my icepick! but there is something strange about this.”
“We will go see,” declared the captain.
He hurried for a coil of rope and a rifle. Unnoticed by the others, the giant seaman and his employer climbed the slope of the ice mountain. Tom and his helpers were overhauling the airtight pontoon that swung from the left wing of the flying boat. This was the part injured by the latest collision.
“It must be that I am not so well able to judge distances as I was,” the young inventor grumbled. “To smash a wing twice, hand running, as you might say!”