"I think," said Waring, "that we ought to keep one man as a lookout on the highest ice in the vicinity."
"Pity the great iceberg so far 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."
"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."
"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--"