While our young mariner and his companion were working their way up to the table-land, which lay fully three hundred feet above the level of the sea, there was little opportunity for further discourse, so rough was the way, and so difficult the ascent. At the summit, however, there was a short pause, ere the two undertook the mountain proper, and they came to a halt to take a look at the aspect of things around them. There was the boat, a mere white speck on the water, flying away with a fresh northerly breeze towards the volcano, while the smoke from the latter made a conspicuous and not very distant land-mark. Nearer at home, all appeared unusually plain for a region in which fogs were so apt to prevail. The cove lay almost beneath them, and the schooner, just then, struck the imagination of her commander as a fearfully small craft to come so far from home and to penetrate so deep among the mazes of the ice. It was that ice, itself, however, that attracted most of Roswell's attention. Far as the eye could reach, north, south, east and west, the ocean was brilliant and chill with the vast floating masses. The effect on the air was always perceptible in that region, 'killing the summer,' as the sealers expressed it; but it seemed to be doubly so at the elevation to which the two adventurers had attained. Still, the panorama was magnificent. The only part of the ocean that did not seem to be alive with ice-bergs, if one may use such an expression, was the space within the group, and that was as clear as an estuary in a mild climate. It really appeared as if nature had tabooed that privileged spot, in order that the communication between the different islands should remain open. Of course, the presence of so many obstacles to the billows without, and indeed even to the rake of the winds, produced smooth water within, the slow, breath-like heaving and setting of the ceaseless ground-swell, being the only perceptible motion to the water in side. "'Tis a very remarkable view, Stephen," said Roswell Gardiner, "but there will be one much finer, if we can work our way up that cone of a mountain, and stand on its naked cap. I wish I had brought an old ensign and a small spar along, to set up the gridiron, in honour of the States. We're beginning to put out our feelers, old Stimson, and shall have 'em on far better bits of territory than this, before the earth has gone round in its track another hundred years." "Well, to my notion, Captain Gar'ner," answered the seaman, following his officer towards the base of the cone, "Uncle Sam has got more land now than he knows what to do with. If a body could discover a bit of ocean, or a largish sort of a sea, there might be some use in it. Whales are getting to be skeary, and are mostly driven off their old grounds; and as for the seals, you must bury yourself, craft and all, up to the truck in ice, to get a smile from one of their good-lookin' count'nances, as I always say."