"Not time to turn out yet, I hope?" I exclaimed. "I don't feel to have been below ten minutes."
"There's the finest sight to see on deck," said he, "that you're likely to turn up this side of Boston. Tumble up and have a look if only for five minutes"; and without another word he hastened up the ladder.
I dropped out of my hammock, pulled on my boots and monkey-jacket, and went on deck, noting the hour by the cabin clock to be twenty minutes before eleven. The captain stood at the mizzen-rigging with a telescope at his eye, and beside him stood Mr. Sweers, likewise holding a glass, and both men pointed their telescopes towards the sea on the lee bow, where—never having before beheld an iceberg—I perceived what I imagined to be an island covered with snow.
An iceberg it was—not a very large one. It was about five miles distant; it had a ragged sky line which made it resemble a piece of cliff gone adrift—such a fragment of cliff as, let me say, a quarter of a mile of the chalk of the South Foreland would make, if you can imagine a mass of the stuff detaching itself from under the verdure at the top and floating off jagged and precipitous. There was nothing to be seen but that iceberg. No others. The sea ran smooth as oil, and of a hard green, piebald foam lines as in the earlier morning, with but a light swell out of the west, which came lifting stealthily to the side of the schooner. There was a small breeze; the sky had a somewhat gloomy look; the schooner was at this hour crawling along at the rate of about four and a half knots.
I said to Halsted: "There was nothing in sight when I went below at eight bells. Where's that berg come from?"
"From behind the horizon," he answered. "The breeze freshened soon after you left the deck, and only slackened a little while since."
"What can they see to keep them staring so hard?" said I, referring to the captain and Mr. Sweers, who kept their glasses steadily levelled at the iceberg.
"They've made out a ship upon the ice," he answered; "a ship high and dry upon a slope of foreshore. I believe I can see her now—the gleam of the snow is confusing; there's a black spot at the base almost amidships of the berg."
I had a good sight in those days. I peered awhile and made out the object, but with the naked eye I could never have distinguished it as a ship at that distance.
"She's a barque," I heard Mr. Sweers say.