aresay Captain Marsham will run close in for us to explore."

By this time the mist had been driven back so far that they saw, opening
before them, white and glistening in the sunshine like a band of silver
stretching beyond the floe, the ice of the polar ocean. It was miles
away to north, to east, and west, and apparently only a few feet above
the sea, that, strain their eyes as they would, there was always the
floe offering itself as a barrier to stay further progress in that
direction.

To their left, and extending toward the north, there was the island; but
apparently, too, it did not go very far in the latter direction, but
trended round, as if that were the termination of the island. Southward
they could not make out its extent.

"Well, Handscombe, what do you say to landing and examining the wreck?"

It was the captain who spoke, and the doctor and Steve both echoed his
last word.

"Wreck?"

"Yes; didn't you see it. There, high up yonder, this side of the sharp
point which runs out to the east. I daresay that was the cause of the
wreck. Here, take the glass."

He handed his telescope to the doctor, who made a long inspection, and
then passed it to Steve, who took it with hands trembling from eagerness
to view what was in all probability the remains of his uncle's vessel,
whose return had been so anxiously awaited all through the past winter,
but in the spring given up as being ice-bound somewhere in the north.

Yes, there was the hull of a good-sized ship fast on the rocks, and with
decks ripped up by the waves, so that, as the vessel lay over on its
port side, Steve could peer with the glass right into the hold between
the deck beams. There was the stump of the bowsprit pointing upward
toward the stony cliffs, but the masts were completely gone, and an ugly
gap in the port side suggested that it would not be long before the
timbers quite disappeared.

Steve handed the glass back with a sigh, and his face contracted.

"No, no; don't look like that," said the captain gently; "we don't know
that this is the _Ice Blink_."

"You are saying that to comfort me," replied the boy sadly. "It must
be."

"Why?"

"You said it was possible that they might have made for Jan Mayen and
been frozen up there."

"I did."

"Well, there is the vessel," said Steve piteously.

"How do you know?"

The boy looked at him almost angrily, and pointed to the wreck, as if
there was the answer to the question.