When all is ready Captain West mounts to the crow's-nest to con the ship, and Captain Forrest, another old whaler, is on the bridge. The wheel is in the hands of two intelligent Boston sailors. Captain West sings out, "One bell--starboard--steady!" and we are off. It looks as if it were going to be a ticklish business for the _Progress_, with only half an inch of steel to withstand the pressure of the loose bergs, but I say to myself that with Captain Coffin in the crow's-nest, and the _Corwin_ in the lead, it is ten to one that she comes through without even knocking the paint off. As we gather speed I hurry to the stern to see how the _Progress_ is coming on. She winds her way beautifully between the bergs, in and out through the passage which we are making. Some of the ice the _Corwin_ can push to one side or the other, but when this is not possible she backs up in order to get good headway, and charges the obstruction, and strikes it fairly between the eyes. She comes to a dead stop, and quivers from stem to stern with the tremendous impact. A rending, grinding noise is heard, and the berg which challenged us is a berg no longer; and its fragments are brushed aside as we push our way through. Captain West laughingly calls from above, "Get out of the way, if you don't want to get hit." So on we go, backing and turning, and plunging and wriggling through the ice. As we were thus engaged I espied a seal, about three hundred yards off our starboard bow, and, seizing a Winchester, I let drive. The captain called down, "Killed; good shot." I should have done well to rest on my laurels, for though I had above forty more shots that day I did not kill anything. By six o'clock we were through the ice and in open water again, with Indian Point, or Cape Chaplain, dead ahead. Almost immediately we were boarded by the natives, who called out: "Hello, hello, how d'ye do?" We answered in kind. Then, after a string of lurid oaths in bad English, they said: "Plenty man cough--make die--you got medicine?" But to our question as to how many people there were in their village they replied: "Don't know." "Why, can't you count?" "No; Siberia side all d--n fools." At which we were forced to smile. "Say, you got chaw tobacco?" I could not remain deaf to this appeal, so I cut up a cigar and watched it go into their mouths. Then, after I had taken their photograph in a group, we all went ashore, where I found a few native skin huts and one or two houses built with timber which they had obtained in trade from whalers. These were modeled after the houses that the whalers or missionaries had erected. [Illustration: Eskimo Village, East Cape--Northeastern Point of Asia.] Indian Point is a long, low spit of land, and is a freak of nature, being nothing more nor less than a moraine in the sea. The great icebergs ground here and melt, dropping the stone and gravel which they have brought from some distant bay where they were born.