Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/403

Rh would find a great field of icebergs, then miles of floe, and then again open water. The aurora was seen every evening, but it seemed pale and white.

"Captain Burrows brought the 'Duncan McDonald's' head around to the west in open water, one fine day in early August, and cruised slowly; taking a great many observations, and hunting, as he told me, for floating ice—he was hunting for a current. For several days we kept in the open water, but close to the ice, until one morning the captain ordered the ship to stand due north across the open sea.

"He called me into his cabin, and with a large map of the polar regions on his table, to which he often referred, he said: 'Son, I've been hunting for a current; there's plenty of 'em in the Arctic Ocean, but the one I want ain't loafing around here. You see, son, it's currents that carries these icebergs and floes south; I didn't tell you, but some days when we were in those floes, we lost as much as we gained. We worked our way north through the floe, but not on the surface of the globe; the floe was taking us south with it. Maybe you won't believe it, but there are currents going north in this sea; once or twice in a lifetime, a whaler or passage-hunter returns with a story of being drifted north—now that's what I want, I am hunting for a northern current. We will go to the northern shore of this open water, be it one mile or one thousand, and there—well, hunt again.'

"Well, it was in September when we at last got to what seemed the northern shore of this open sea. We had to proceed very slowly, as there were almost daily fogs and occasional snow-storms; but one morning the ship rounded to, almost under the shadow of what seemed to be a giant iceberg. Captain Burrows came on deck, rubbing his hands in glee.

Son,' said he, 'that is no iceberg; that's ancient ice, perpetual ice, the great ice-ring—palæocrystic ice, you scientific fellows call it. I saw it once before, in thirty-seven, when a boy; that's it, and, son, beyond that there is something. Take notice that that is ice; clear, glary ice. You know a so-called iceberg is really a snowberg; it's three-fourths under water. Now, it may be possible that, that being ice which will float more than half out of water, the northern currents may go under it—but I don't believe it. Under or over, I am going to find one of 'em, if it takes till doomsday.'

"We sailed west, around close to this great wall of ice, for two weeks, without seeing any evidence of a current of any kind, until there came on a storm from the north-west that drove a great deal of ice around the great ring; but it seemed to keep rather clear of the great wall of ice and to go off