Our anchors were at the cathead, ready for letting go in case of sudden need; the men hung about on the look-out for ice, ready in an instant to trim sail. We were sailing towards the island through an avenue of bergs: clear water sparkled from the thrust of our stem to the very wash of the distant surf, with no other obstructions than here and there a lump of the crystal stuff lifting sullenly with the swell, flashing gloriously, and so proclaiming itself to the sight when the sunbeam smote the foam that poured off it. A chart of the islands lay upon the skylight, and every few minutes I would be dropping the telescope to look at the chart, to gather from the tracing the point of coast we were heading for. The whaleman had said that the wreck lay on a ledge in Palmer's Bay, and Cliffe and I were agreed that that large indent was between the two towering shadows, to the right of the taller peak that soared a thousand feet higher than Table Mountain. The icebergs obstructed the view. The line of coast was studded with them: yet every moment I was sinking my sight through the lenses into each opening betwixt the bergs. The brig's progress under her small canvas was about four knots and a half; I'd glanced for a moment at some stately frozen pile majestically rocking and slowly veering by, then put my eye to the glass afresh. My very soul was now loathing the sight of the ice. The largest of the islands was no longer an object of splendour and sublimity, but of horror and heart-weariness, charged with a spirit of desolation that subdued me to a sort of numbness of mind if I looked long: it seemed to stonefy the very principle of life in me, as though there was a horrid magic in its bald white stare to look a man into craziness, and emptiness, and into its own frozen lifelessness. But now, as we approached, the features of the land began to steal out into a brilliant keenness wherever there was space for them to show betwixt the floating ice, and on a sudden, whilst I was looking through the glass, the motion of the brig slided a seaborne hill away to the left, and exposed a front of cliff that lay with a shadow upon it as though it was a sort of ravine, at the foot of which, though I instantly guessed it would lift to some height above the sea as we got nearer, lay a black speck. I looked again, and cried out wild with excitement: 'Cliffe, I have the hull! I have the hull!' The little man came headlong to my side, and put his grimacing face to the telescope. 'Yes! I see it, I have it!' he shouted. 'Just as reported--high above the wash--fair in the heart of the Bay. It'll be all plain sailing now. Lor, but there ought to be no difficulty in boarding her.' He returned the glass to me: I levelled it afresh at the instant that the corner of a big heap of berg floated right into the field of vision.