"Why, I'm all mixed up about it," came the slow reply. "It certainly
isn't a steamer, and again it just can't be land!"
"Well, hardly," Beverly answered. "To tell the honest truth I don't
believe there's a foot of land closer to us than the Bermudas, which must
lie off in that direction," pointing further toward the southwest.
"When the sun glints on it I'm fairly dazzled," Jack continued, "just as
if some one had used a piece of broken looking-glass to shoot the rays
into my eyes. And then there's a sort of queer mist hanging about that
thing in the bargain, so that sometimes it's almost blotted out. What
under the sun can it be?"
"I think I can give a guess," Tom called back. "How would an iceberg fill
the bill, Colin?"
"Just the thing, I'd say," the lieutenant answered, "only who ever heard
of an iceberg floating down in mid-Atlantic at this season of the year?
Such a thing would be uncommon, to say the least."
"But not impossible?" ventured Tom, to which the other agreed.
"Take a look, and tell us, Colin," urged Jack, offering the glasses.
A minute afterwards they were handed bade again.
"Just what it is, Tom, after all," reported Beverly. "A pretty tall berg
it seems to be, with an extensive ice-floe around it as level in spots as
a floor. I thought I saw something move on it that might be a Polar bear,
caught when the berg broke away from its Arctic glacier. We will pass
directly over, and may be able to feel the chill.
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