nd carefully examined the
distant cloud-like appearance.

"You are right, Mildmay," he exclaimed, as he closed the instrument,
"that is the land; it is Cape Farewell, the most southerly point of that
great _terra incognita_, Greenland. With your permission, Sir Reginald,
I will reduce the speed of the ship to about twenty miles per hour, and
slightly alter her course; and, from the look of the weather, I think I
may promise that, when we go on deck to smoke our cigars after dinner,
you will see a sight well worth looking at."

CHAPTER EIGHT.

A SUPERB SPECTACLE.

Upon one pretext or another the professor purposely delayed the rising
of the party from the table until nine o'clock; and when they at length
reached the deck they found the somewhat rash promise made by von
Schalckenberg abundantly fulfilled. A scene of surpassing loveliness
met their delighted gaze, and, to enjoy it more fully and completely, it
was promptly decided to descend to the ocean's surface. The sea on all
sides was thickly covered with detached masses of floating ice, from the
diminutive fragment of drift-ice, measuring not more than two or three
square yards in area, to gigantic bergs, measuring, in one or two
instances, from a half to three quarters of a mile long, and towering
from two to three hundred feet above the surface of the water. The sun
was nearing the horizon, and, with his golden beams falling full upon
them, these huge masses of ice glittered against the rosy grey of the
horizon like burnished metal or solid flame. Two of these bergs in
particular were the objects of the travellers' especial wonder and
admiration. One, at a distance of some six miles to the eastward,
resembled an island of crystal capped with an assemblage of marble
ruins. Its perpendicular sides were rent here and there with deep
fissures, and in the centre there yawned an immense cavern, the interior
of which displayed every conceivable shade of the most lovely green,
from the transparent tint of the emerald to the opaque colour of the
malachite, a projecting bluff near at hand casting a strangely-
contrasting shadow of the deepest, purest ultramarine. The ruined
pinnacles on the summit of the berg gleamed with every tint of the
rainbow, from palest yellow, through orange and crimson, to a blue
varying from the most delicate cobalt to a deep violet, almost
undistinguishable from black. And, to complete the fairy-like beauty of
the picture, the bo