The sailors took no notice of the Count and Baron as they approached.

"I tell you I've been to the North Sea and to the South Seas, to the Red
Sea and the Black Sea, and the Yellow Sea too, and crossed the Atlantic,
Pacific, and Indian Oceans scores of times; and I've sailed to the North
Pole and South Pole, and all the world round, and I have seen stranger
sights than have most men, from the day they were born to the day they
died. The strangest spectacle I ever beheld was once in the Indian
Ocean. We were sailing along with a fair breeze and studding sails set
below and aloft, when we saw coming towards us five water-spouts, just
like so many twisted columns: dark clouds seemed to come from the sky,
and piles of water rose out of the ocean. It was a bad look-out for us,
for we expected to have them aboard our ship, when they would have sent
her to the bottom in no time. But our skipper was not a man to be
daunted by difficulties. As soon as he saw them coming he ordered the
guns to be loaded and run out. As the first came near he fired, and
down fell the waterspout with a rushing sound into the ocean. `It is
your turn next,' he sang out, pointing a gun at another, which he
treated in the same fashion; but three came on together, when he blazed
away at them and all were knocked to pieces in a moment; and the ocean
was as calm as it had been before we saw them. You may well say that
was curious. I have heard of water-spouts doing much damage, but I
never saw a ship swamped by one."

The Count and Baron were much interested, and got still nearer, that
they might not lose a word.

"I told you, mates, that I had been to the North Pole and South Pole,
and I've seen wonderful sights there also. What do you think of an
iceberg a mile long, two or three hundred feet high? I have been among
such, and surrounded by them too, in a way which seemed as if it was
impossible we should ever get free again. When the sun is shining
they're beautiful to look at: some with great caverns below, with
icicles hanging down from the roof, and the top of the berg covered with
what one might fancy to be towers, steeples, and ruined castles and
arches, all glittering and shining just as if they were made of
alabaster and precious stones; and the sea a deep purple, or sometimes
blue, with streaks of yellow and red. You'd think it was cold enough
there, but the summer up in the North is one long day, with the sun in
the sky all the