Bodkin, putting down the telescope, exclaimed:
'She lies about forty feet high above the wash. The ice is broke and irregular from the water to where she sits, and I reckon a man might walk upon it if there's a landing-place round the point. But I won't swear to it till I'm close in. Ice is deceitful stuff. Capt'n, there'll be nothen to say till we've taken a look round. 'Tis certain there's to be no getting at the hull from the bottom of the height she rests on, even if the boat could land there.'
'Then lower away, Mr. Bland, as quickly as possible, and be off and back with a report, that we may make up our minds what to do before it falls dark.'
Whilst some hands were getting one of the whale-boats over, others were busy with the deep-sea lead: but we were away, pulling for the shore, before they sounded. I went in the boat, taking the telescope with me. She was a five-oared boat; Bodkin pulled stroke; one of our smartest seamen was in the bows. The fellows bent their backs, and the buoyant little craft, swift of model with the whale-hunter's lines, flashed over the blue ridges; often I sought to bring the glass to bear upon the two figures watching us; to no purpose. The mate would not let me stand up, and I put down the telescope in despair.
'That vessel,' said the mate, 'never berthed herself like that. She's been chucked right up by the ice, and 'twas sudden too, bet yer heart, Bodkin.'
The picture grew amazing as we advanced. The cliffs behind the hull rose to about two hundred feet; I call them cliffs, they were a solid, precipitous, rugged face of ice, how deeply sheathing the black rock of the island no man could tell: the whole stretch of land resembled a gigantic iceberg. The hull lay upon a huge block, the top about forty feet high; it projected in a wide ledge, then fell sheer. You might know it had been snapped from some parent monster by the smooth side it showed to the sea, so clean cut to the eye, it might have been done by the chisel and hammer of a giant big as the blue shadow of mountains beyond.
My eyes were fixed on the wreck, and on the figures standing at her bulwark rail. Now again I tried to bring the telescope to bear: the jumping of the boat made the effort useless. All in a minute one of the figures sprang on to the bulwark; flourished his arms, and then motioned frantically towards the part of the bay concealed by the curve of the ice.
'Hail him, in God's name!' I cried. 'Try him with your voice, Mr. Bland.'
The mate stood up and roared, the full volume of his lungs trumpeting into the inshore wind like a soldier's call, the sweep and lift of the whale-boat to the summit of a large swell helping.