'Is there much ice about the island?' said I.
'Plenty,' he answered. 'The biggest berg I ever see in all my life was close in with that land, third time I wur off it.'
'Suppose the hull of a ship was on a ledge of ice, thirty or forty feet above the wash of the sea; she was lying plain in sight of the ocean'—I named the date on which the skipper of the whaler 'Sea Queen' had passed her—'would you expect to find her still exposed, lying in full view?'
He looked at me with a working mind, his words being too few to help him quickly; then said, turning his eyes upon the captain:
'All things considered, I allow it's more'n likely she'd be smothered up.'
'What's to smother her?' cried Captain Cliffe.
'The congregating of bergs,' answered the other.
'Is that all ye know of ice?' exclaimed the little man. 'Haven't you heard that ice fetches away from the main and works north this time o' year?'
'I'm asked a question,' said the man with a note of sullenness in his voice, 'and I'm expected, I suppose, for to speak the truth, being sent for. All I know is there's nothen so shifting as ice, and therefore nothen so smothering.'