The rolling ocean, sallow still, was thick in many places with fog. We saw now that ice lay all about us. There was scarce an opening in the vaporous folds that was not filled with a berg near or distant, a dull, pale, motionless mass; the vast island that had been off our starboard quarter when the wind broke up the thickness, we had now brought on to our port bow, and were slowly passing; its loom was more like a blue shadow of land in the dull yellow light of that Antarctic afternoon, summer as it was, than ice: yet it was a vast berg stretching west and east: its westermost point was nearest and hung like a mass of foreland, wild with the vapour that flew smoking off its face and points, and with the leap of the surf at its base in lofty columns of foam, whose heads the wind swept off in clouds. I stood beside Cliffe under the shelter of a large square of canvas in the main rigging: oilskinned figures watched on the forecastle; we drove very slowly; the running rigging had been seen to and carefully coiled down ready for instant handling should a sudden cry from the forecastle compel a shift of helm. I saw many birds flying in the hollow seas, and turning to mark the bearings of a small berg which had come and gone and come again on the starboard bow, I observed slowly swinging past about a half-acre of the giant kelp of this part of the world, a huge seaweed, glancing black in the whiteness of the froth, and hissing like shingle as the salt shot through it. 'Now that we are under way again,' I exclaimed, 'I am realising that the end of this cruise is at hand.' 'Were it all clear water and fine weather,' answered the little man, 'we should be off the island by noon to-morrow.' 'What distance do you reckon it?' 'Eighty miles.' 'That ship we have just spoken makes me believe the hull has been sighted again and again.' 'Why, perhaps so,' he answered, 'but not of necessity.' 'She was off the island, close enough to see the rocks.' 'And who's to say that she's not the first that's been off that land this six months--close in with the coast, I mean? Depend upon it, Mr. Moore,' he went on with his face full of earnestness betwixt his grimaces, 'you're doing the right thing for your own peace of mind, and in the cause of humanity....' 'Oh, it goes higher than humanity, man, higher than humanity,' I interrupted. 'In finding out for yourself,' he continued, 'whether the hull's the wreck of the "Lady Emma," and whether the captain, and his wife, and your young lady are still aboard----' 'By heaven, yes, then!' I exclaimed; 'Only to think of her as _being_ on board, and perishing there for the want of my coming to her help! Whether she's there or not, Cliffe, it was the right thing to do, as you say, and even in that thought I find a sort of comfort. Shall you heave-to when it comes on dark?' 'I'm for shoving on, sir, but we'll take no risks.' 'None, though the job of heaving the land into view should fill another month.'