"No, sir; it is a matter of accident," replied the Norseman. "There are plenty; but every year they get farther away, for they are hunted so much that they shun the places where vessels come." Their words came plainly to where Steve was busy with a glass; for, after the shooting was over, and the men in one of the boats had collected all the slain to hand over to the cook, who immediately made Watty Links discontented by setting him to pluck the birds, the lad had ascended to the crow's-nest to have a look round. It was very wonderful, that outlook to Steve; but it seemed to him awful and depressing. It was so silent and so strange that at times even the continuous daylight caused him to feel a sensation of shrinking, especially when seen through the telescope; for there were moments when he felt as if he were passing into some far-off, weird wonderland, a land of solemn silence, where life could not exist; and at such moments he would take his eye from the glass, and look down at the men on deck and see signs of human creatures being near to carry off the strange sensation. He had just been passing through one of these fits; for it was evening, and though broad daylight, with the sun shining, there was a peculiarity in the sky to northward, a something he could not well have explained, which made him feel that night was at hand. And as he leaned against the side of the crow's-nest he listened to what was said on deck, and then once more gazed to the northward, following the line of coast, and then giving a start; for a few miles only from where they were gliding onward he saw unmistakably that their journey in that direction was at an end. He carefully adjusted the glass so as to make sure, and found that it was so: the icy barrier was jammed tight on to the land, and on following it to the westward it extended in one solid wall right away till it was lost in the distance. Sweeping back to the coast, he searched carefully to see if there were any opening or fiord by which they could pass onward; but there was not a sign, and he was just about to announce his discovery, when he caught sight of something about a mile away, standing out plainly on a low headland, with the black face of a large cliff behind to throw it up so clearly that he wondered why he had not seen it at the first. Steve Young. "At last!" he said, with his heart beating violently and a curious choking sensation rising to his throat. For there, looking dim now as he glanced through the glass once more, was a wooden cross, evidently set up as a signal, the first trace of human occupation of that solemn, solitary land; and it was some moments before his emotion would let him hail the deck. "Ahoy there!" he shouted; then exultantly, but in a tone of voice which did not sound like his own, "Ice right ahead, and a signal showing about a mile away!" "What!" shouted Captain Marsham. "Stop a minute; I'll come up."