s and forwards on the deck, on the windward side. We
were sliding smoothly over the surface of an undulating sea. The
_Halbrane_ resembled an enormous bird, one of the gigantic albatross
kind described by Arthur Pym--which had spread its sail-like wings,
and was carrying a whole ship's crew towards space.

James West was looking out through his glasses to starboard at an
object floating two or three miles away, and several sailors,
hanging over the side, were also curiously observing it.

I went forward and looked attentively at the object. It was an
irregularly formed mass about twelve yards in length, and in the
middle of it there appeared a shining lump.

"That is no whale," said Martin Holt, the sailing-master. "It
would have blown once or twice since we have been looking at it."

"Certainly!" assented Hardy. "Perhaps it is the carcase of
some deserted ship."

"May the devil send it to the bottom!" cried Roger. "It would
be a bad job to come up against it in the dark; it might send us
down before we could know what had happened."

"I believe you," added Drap, "and these derelicts are more
dangerous than a rock, for they are now here and again there, and
there's no avoiding them."

Hurliguerly came up at this moment and planted his elbows on the
bulwark, alongside of mine.

"What do you think of it, boatswain?" I asked.

"It is my opinion, Mr. Jeorling," replied the boatswain, "that
what we see there is neither a blower nor a wreck, but merely a lump
of ice."

"Hurliguerly is right," said James West; "it is a lump of ice,
a piece of an iceberg which the currents have carried hither."

"What?" said I, "to the forty-fifth parallel?"

"Yes, sir," answered West, "that has occurred, and the ice
sometimes gets up as high as the Cape, if we are to take the word of
a French navigator, Captain Blosseville, who met one at this height
in 1828."

"Then this mass will melt before long," I observed, feeling not
a little surprised that West had honoured me by so lengthy a reply.

"It must indeed be dissolved in great part already," he
continued, "and what we see is the remains of a mountain of ice
which must have weighed millions of tons."

Captain Len Guy now appeared, and perceiving the group of sailors
around West, he came forward. A few words were exchanged in a low
tone between the captain and the lieutenant, and the latter passed
his glass to the former, who turned it upon the floating object, now
at leas