I then said, 'Do you know that we're sailing to the New Orkneys?'
'It's to search for a wreck, ain't it, sir?'
'A wreck with live people in it,' said Captain Cliffe. 'I made that clear, didn't I?'
'Then I hope we shan't find 'em,' said Bodkin.
'What!' shouted Cliffe with a hideous face.
'For their own sakes. Who'd lock a dog up there?' said the man, running the length of his wet bare arm along his streaming forehead ''Tain't imagined here, with the pitch 'twixt the seams like suet, and the paint-work blistering into scabs. I've been off the larger of them islands five times. Yer wouldn't know 'em from icebergs, 'cept for here and there a piece of naked black rock showing where ice hadn't formed or snow couldn't keep a hold of.'
'Could a boat land?' I exclaimed, scarcely bearing to hear him when he talked like that.
'Why yes, sir. This time of the year--watching a smooth--'tain't always what they calls weather down there; but it's b---- cold.'
'Were ye ever ashore on them islands?' inquired the captain.
'Did your ship send a boat ashore?' I asked.
'The last time I was off them rocks a boat was sent and she came back again; they was nearly capsized, and that was all they did.'
His recollection, however, was not very clear. He talked of tall ice cliffs and of a huge dim mountain far inland; and of peaks and projections showing and disappearing amidst storms of snow.
'Is there much ice about the island?' said I.
'Plenty,' he answered. 'The biggest berg I ever see in all my life was close in with that land, third time I wur off it.'
'Suppose the hull of a ship was on a ledge of ice, thirty or forty feet above the wash of the sea; she was lying plain in sight of the ocean'--I named the date on which the skipper of the whaler 'Sea Queen' had passed her--'would you expect to find her still exposed, lying in full view?'
He looked at me with a working mind, his words being too few to help him quickly; then said, turning his eyes upon the captain:
'All things considered, I allow it's more'n likely she'd be smothered up.'
'What's to smother her?' cried Captain Cliffe.
'The congregating of bergs,' answered the other.
'Is that all ye know of ice?' exclaimed the little man. 'Haven't you heard that ice fetches away from the main and works north this time o' year?'