“Let Mr. Damon and his party catch one of those whales or a bear, and they’ll be fixed all right for food,” said Ned, chuckling. “Wouldn’t Mr. Damon be blessing everything in nature if he came to eating blubber?”
Tom drove his flying boat first to the east until they could see the coast of the big island they had left the night before, and then turned her about and drove west until Greenland was in sight. At each lap he brought their course many miles southward. Little floating on the surface of the sea escaped their keen gaze.
It was mid-afternoon when Captain Olaf Karofsen, looking through Tom’s powerful glasses, began to show more excitement. Even with only the naked eye there could be seen ahead two tall pinnacles like cathedral towers. There was a narrow space between them, and miles upon miles of hummock ice and low bluffs lay about the two spires.
“Dot iss she!” exclaimed Captain Karofsen. “I vould not fool you, Misder Swift. Dot is de perg I see Mr. Damon and the sick man undt my five sailors from the Kalrye climb upon when their boat was smashed. I could not mistake those two points like chimneys.”
“Is there anything moving on that great field of ice?” demanded Tom anxiously.
His companions used their eyes, and the binoculars, as well, to the best advantage. Tom drove the flying boat nearer and nearer to the pinnacles of ice. Not a moving object was descried beneath them. The great iceberg seemed to be as abandoned as any of the other fields they had flown over during their marvelous journey through the air.
CHAPTER XIX
THE DESERT OF ICE
The portion of the great iceberg that was visible consisted of a good many square miles of hills and valleys of ice, with the two more important eminences standing close together near the middle of the vast field.
It was so huge that its movement (and bergs are always in motion) could not be observed at all. It seemed as immovable as the island of Iceland itself, yet Captain Olaf Karofsen was positive that it had drifted a good many miles southward during the two weeks since his schooner had been wrecked on one of the outer reefs of the berg.
As the Winged Arrow swooped lower, and Tom Swift drove it around the entire outer edge of the iceberg, the schooner captain tried to mark the spot where the Kalrye had struck and sunk and the spot where the lifeboat had been smashed.