I glanced at Miss Otway: she was staring at the sight with large nostrils and a gaze of terror under the little frown that the strain of her gaze had knitted her brows into.
'That is ice,' she cried.
'Ay, miles of it' said I. 'But is there nothing good for us amidst that prodigious huddle of sail-like stuff?'
I took the telescope out of the companion and knelt with it to steady the tubes, and slowly and carefully swept the whole of that wonderful range, from film to film blue in the air. The sun's rosy light was full upon it; only the brush of an artist could show you what I saw as the surge ran me into a clear view of the horizon. It looked like a hundred cities of marble and alabaster, all of them going to pieces. It was no compact coast. There were many wide gaps, titanic streets fit for the tread of such ocean giant-spirits as would inhabit those colossal structures of crystal. The nearest point seemed about ten miles distant. All was clear sea between, and northwards I saw no ice.
Miss Otway stood beside me holding by a belaying pin in the rail. Again and again she would say:
'Do you see any signs of a ship? Is not that the canvas of a ship—there, just where your telescope now points?'
I saw no ship, but I looked with impassioned intentness till my eyeball seemed to melt dim through the lens under the brass it was pressed against, conceiving that in so vast an arm of ice some vessel might lie embayed.