Jack borrowed Richardson's telescope. As the ship rose he searched the south-eastern sea, and when the Diane was near the height of the rise he caught the ice quite near: nearer than he had expected and very much larger, a lofty mass with two peaks radiant green in the sun towering above the surf that broke to such an astonishing height on the western side.
He studied it for a while, altered course, not indeed to close the iceberg but to come within a mile, and passed the glass to Stephen, who, having stared hard for the space of three great upward heaves, most reluctantly handed it back again. 'I must go,' he said. 'I promised Mr Macmillan to be with him at noon; I am already late, and we have a delicate little undertaking in hand.'
'I am sure you will succeed,' said Jack. 'But even if you are delayed, I trust we shall meet at dinner.'
The only guest in the cabin that day was Richardson, and in his company Jack did not scruple to speak of the ship and her affairs. 'I believe we must edge away, once we have had a good look at the ice island,' he said. 'Perhaps I am mistaken, but it does not seem to me old ice at all. It may have come from behind Kerguelen, which is no great way off, and it may have a good many followers. We are well inside the northern limit. You have heard the drift-ice, Stephen, I am sure?'
'Would it be that rap, rap, rap?'
'Ay. There it is again.'
'I noticed it in the forenoon and I supposed it was the cooper or the carpenter or both; but then it occurred to me that they would hardly be working at dinner-time unless the ship were almost sinking, God forbid.'
'No. It is drift-ice. Fortunately we managed to ship a bowgrace, and it is not thick stuff. But even so it will do our copper no good.'
'Kerguelen is what some people call Desolation Island, is it not, sir?' asked Richardson.
'So they do. But it is not our Desolation Island, which is smaller, farther south and east. And there is another in about fifty-eight south, to larboard just as you clear the Magellan Strait. I believe there are a good many places that have been called Desolation at one time or another, which is a pretty comment on a sailor's life. Not that our Desolation was so bad. I do wish you had been in the Leopard, Dick. Such fun we had, shipping a new rudder; and it was possible to make some capital observations - the prettiest triple fixing of our longitude by Jupiter's moons that you can imagine, each fix coinciding with the last and with a perfect lunar distance from Achernar.'
'And you would have been enchanted with the sea-elephants, leopard-seals, penguins, sheath-bills, blue-eyed shags, petrels and above all the splendid albatrosses on their nests. They were....' began Stephen, but he was interrupted by the changing of plates, the coming-in of the pudding, and he lost his thread.
'I fear this may be the last suet-pudding until we reach Batavia,' said Jack gravely. 'Killick tells me that the rats are grown outrageous bold in this freezing weather. So let us enjoy it while we may - damnably mouldy a hundred years hence.' A silence for the first slice of pudding, and then he said, 'But what I do not like about these ice- islands, quite apart from their sinking your ship under you, is that they seem to cause or at least to come before calms. When the poor old Leopard was stove we were in a fog, with scarcely enough air to stir the topgallantsails.'
After dinner they returned to the quarterdeck. The iceberg was now much nearer, and as the sun had moved westward its light was reflected from the many surfaces, showing not only the perfect green but also a broad band of that same pure light transparent aquamarine which Stephen remembered from the Leopard's unhappy encounter. A wonderfully beautiful object, and now much more easily observable: but one to be observed from a distance. The vast mass was unstable; when both the ship and the iceberg lay in the same hollow of the sea, the ice a mile away on the frigate's beam, the watchers saw one of the peaks, the size of a spired cathedral, lean and fall and shatter, its huge component parts crashing down the slope to join the great blocks and minor bergs nearby and sending up vast jets of white seawater as they did so.
Stephen was standing just on the gangway, where a convenient stanchion allowed him to rest his telescope. He was not on the holy quarterdeck; and since all those who had ever been his patients felt that on neutral ground they were entitled to speak to him he was not surprised to hear a deep rumbling West-Country voice close to his ear saying, 'There you are, sir: just on the quarter you may see what we calls a Quaker.' Stephen looked, and there, poised on the wind like its betters, was a small undistinguished shabby brown albatross, Diomedea fuliginosa. 'We calls him a Quaker because he is dressed modest.'
'A very good name too, Grimble,' said Stephen. 'And what do you call the other one?' - nodding towards a giant petrel just beyond.
'Some says bone-breaker, and some says albatross's mate, but most says Mother Cary's goose. Goose, sir: not chicken. Her chickens you could put a dozen in your pocket.' A pause, and in a lower tone, 'If I may make so bold, sir, how does our Arthur come along?'
Arthur Grimble was one of the syphilitic gummata cases:Stephen and Macmillan had operated to relieve the pressure on his brain. 'The next few days will tell,' said Stephen. 'He is in no pain now, and he may recover. But do not tell his friends to be very hopeful: it was a last resort. And if he goes, he goes easy.'
'No,' said Captain Aubrey to the master, a few feet away. 'I am afraid it is not possible.' He had been looking hungrily at the blocks of ice, all pure fresh water, floating no great way off, sometimes half a mile from the parent island.
'Not in this sea, sir,' said Warren. 'But was we to lie to for a while it would surely moderate. The surf on the island is a good third less than it was before dinner.'
Jack nodded. He looked at the oncoming waves: their tall crests were no longer being torn off so that flying water raced before them. 'Mr Bennett,' he said, 'jump up to the masthead with a glass and tell me what you see. Take your time and report to me below. Doctor, will you join me in a pot of coffee?'
They were at their second cup when Bennett knocked on the door. 'I am sorry to be so dishevelled, sir,' he said. 'I had made my hat fast with a piece of marline, but it absolutely parted - white Marline, too. I began right astern, sir, and made the sweep, but nothing did I see until one point on the starboard bow, where there was a mountain of ice, much the same size as this, about four leagues away; then three more smaller ones another point south. From the white water I thought there were some little islands after them, but I could not be sure of anything until I had come round to about due south, and there, stretching from the beam to the quarter, there were four, evenly spaced, three leagues off.'
'Thank you, Bennett,' said Jack. 'Have a cup of coffee to warm you.' And when he had gone, 'Alas, it will not do. I had hoped for a few more days of this glorious run. But it will not do. Although we are still too far west, I shall have to edge away. How I wish I had never spoken of calm: the wind has been dropping steadily ever since I said it.'
