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The base of these floating ice-mountains was very steep, so that it would have been impossible for us to land upon one. Moreover, we saw no seals these were usually very numerous where the ice-fields abounded nor even a flock of the screeching penguins which, on other occasions, the Halbrane sent diving by myriads as she passed through them; the birds themselves seemed rarer and wilder.
The strait was already filled with ice-drift, and their vessels were brought to a standstill, after about a hundred and fifty English miles of progress beyond the Waigats; for the whole sea of Tartary, converted into a mass of ice-mountains and islands, and lashed into violent agitation by a north easterly storm, seemed driving down upon the doomed voyagers.
Were there only drifting ice-mountains in the distance instead of a shore? Presently, there was no doubt on the subject; for some time past the crew had no longer believed existence of land in that direction. Ten minutes afterwards, the man in the crow’s-nest announced that several icebergs were coming north-west, in an oblique direction, into the course of the Halbrane.
Our Indians, exhilarated by the sunshine, were garrulous as the gulls and plovers, and pulled heartily at their oars, evidently glad to get out of the ice with a whole boat. "Now for Taku," they said, as we glided over the shining water. "Good-bye, Ice-Mountains; good-bye, Sum Dum."
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