soon as day broke, when the
prospect around the ship became more extended, thus rendering his
services useful--shouted out a cry that had almost been forgotten, and
which made every heart on board leap with mingled feelings of
overpowering joy, consternation, surprise, dismay! Every pulse stopped
for a second spellbound! The cry was--"Land ho!"

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS.

"Land!" called out the captain. "Where away?"

"On the weather-beam," answered the man aloft, who still spoke in a
voice which sounded as if he had been greatly startled. "It's rising
rapidly every moment, sir, out of the water."

"The fellow must be blind!" exclaimed Captain Dinks. "There is no land
there in that direction, if I know it. He must be taking one of those
big icebergs for an island; that's about the matter. Hanged if I don't
go up and see for myself!"

Running down the poop ladder, the captain soon started up the shrouds on
the port side towards the maintop where the lookout man was stationed.
It was not Karl Ericksen this time, whose word he would have implicitly
taken, but Bill Moody, one of the worst of the crew, and who, it may be
remembered, had already evinced an unsailorlike spirit by his
insubordination on an occasion when the pluck and endurance of everyone
required to be tested. From this fact alone, Captain Dinks was the less
inclined to trust him.

The captain, however, found mounting the ratlines not so easy a task as
he might have imagined, for the rigging was all frozen hard and as
unbending as iron; but he persevered unflinchingly, and disdaining to
creep through the "lubber's hole," climbed over the top in the usual
sailor's way, although he puffed and panted a good deal when he got
there, which proved to him that the flesh he had gained on his plump
little person, since he had been a youngster and first shinned up the
rigging, had not improved his climbing powers.

"Now, where's this wonderful land of your's!" he asked, as soon as he
got alongside of Bill Moody, taking his glass out of his pocket and
adjusting the focus ready for action.

"There," answered the man surlily, pointing towards the north-east,
where a faint blue bank seemed to rise out of the ocean above and beyond
the ice-fields. It could be seen with the naked eye to be of a
different colour to even the most distant bergs, the distinction being
quite marked.

"By Jove, the man's right!" ejaculated Captain Dinks with