Captain Marsham had given his orders over-night, and hence the steam was up by breakfast time, and directly after that meal the vessel was gliding northward with her propeller churning up the deep water into a silvery foam, while two ever-extending waves ran toward the sides of the fiord, and broke upon the perpendicular rocks which ran down into deep water. Steve felt a little regret at quitting their anchorage, till he recalled that there was an equally beautiful one at the foot of the frozen fall; and he had just come to the conclusion that it was a very wise change, for it suggested imprisonment to be shut in on three sides by the towering rocks and the piled-up ice-floes, when the captain said to Mr Handscombe: "This will be a wonderful change for the better." "But you will not go on loading the vessel with oil now?" said the doctor. "Why not? We shall have grand opportunities to do that, and make expeditions inland as well, on the chance of finding that our friends may also have been driven up here." "But the vessel--we can never extricate her, so why load her?" "Because the chances here are so many. It looks at the first blush as if the vessel is bound to stay here till she has rotted and the engine rusted away, but we are not going to despair. Who could, in weather like this, eh, Steve?" "Of course not," said the boy. "Why, we can set to work and build a ship big enough to carry us back to Norway out of the planks, if the ice behind us does not melt." The captain nodded, and then he resumed his task of keeping a sharp look-out forward in search of rocks, but his search was vain, for the water was immensely deep and clear, and they reached the open part of the fiord, and cast anchor a short distance away from the mouth of the black chasm and in full view of the glacier. This promised to give them shelter from the first northern gale which blew, though one of the lateral valleys looked threatening, and as if the wind could rush along it like a blast roaring through a pipe; but as that was below their anchorage, it was not likely to affect them much. The anchor then went down in deep water, and as if they had only to sail out up the fiord at any time they liked, the captain had two boats lowered, and giving the mate charge of one, he led the way in the other to the mouth of the chasm, while the men, with their lances and harpoons on board, tugged eagerly at the oars, ready and willing for their first attack upon the oil-yielding animals of the northern seas. Success attended them on getting to the more open water at the end of the chasm, for, after a little searching, the continuation was found right at the back of a huge mass of rock, and, clearing this obstacle, the men rowed on, to plunge into brief darkness again beneath the long stretch of ice arches. Then came a good, steady pull and a cheer, for the boats were out in clear water in the wide channel which ran up between the ice-bound shore and the floe.