off," added Regnar.

"Sposum wind hold north-west, and ice keep packed, why not go down
to-morrow and look alound?" asked Peter, quietly.

"If these westerly winds hold, there will be no danger in so doing, if,
as I guess, the pack extends from here to the shore of the Magdalens. If
so, we are not likely to find any sealers to the eastward, unless they
have got jammed in the pack; and probably that steamer we saw the other
day has passed to the south, and will make to westward before another
southerly gale comes to open the ice."

"You right, master," said Regnar. "We go to-morrow to berg; see great
ways from there, if we can get up. 'Nother thing we ought to do--move
off this floe before next gale, else get house broken, and lose many
things."

"Pooh!" said Waring, carelessly; "this berg would last a month yet."

"I risk this _h_ice, more'n twenty, tirty feet tick. Sea no break this
up."

Orloff's eyes flashed, and he seemed about to make some angry reply, but
with a visible effort to restrain himself, signed to La Salle to follow
him, and went out of the hut. La Salle found him on the summit of the
lookout, gazing out over the star-lit sea.

"I was angry, and came near forgetting the part I play," said he,
bitterly, in French; "but they know nothing of ice-lore, and I should
not be angry at them for believing that this heavy bit of ice, although
not as large as those around us, is equally as safe."

"And why is it not?" asked La Salle.

"Because," answered the lad, "this floe is of snow-ice, probably pierced
by dozens of hidden cavities. I fancied the other night that I heard a
ripple of water beneath me, as I have heard it in winter when seeking
the hidden streams beneath the glaciers, but I did not hear it again,
and may have been mistaken."

"Well, we are safe, I suppose, as long as we lie deep in the pack."

Regnar smiled pityingly.

"Do you see the kind of ice which surrounds us now--those heavy floes,
hard, flinty, and widespread, and that berg, gigantic, and almost as
hard as glass? Well, if we have a heavy blow from the north-west, we
shall be jammed between the ice now resting on the Magdalens and those
Greenland monsters yonder, and if there is a weak spot in our berg--"

"Well, what then, Regnie?"

"We shall be ground to powder, or, at least, our berg will; and in such
a break-up, we shall have little chance to save anything except our
lives."

"What, then, ought we to do?"

"We must b