“Hullo!” cried Amos Green, “what’s that?”

“What then?”

“Did you hear nothing?”

“No.”

“I could have sworn that I heard a voice.”

“Impossible.  We are all here.”

“It must have been my fancy then.”

Captain Ephraim walked to the seaward face of the cave and swept the ocean with his eyes.  The wind had quite fallen away now, and the sea stretched away to the eastward, smooth and unbroken save for a single great black spar which floated near the spot where the Golden Rod had foundered.

“We should lie in the track of some ships,” said the captain thoughtfully.  “There’s the codders and the herring-busses.  We’re over far south for them, I reckon.  But we can’t be more’n two hundred mile from Port Royal in Arcadia, and we’re in the line of the St. Lawrence trade.  If I had three white mountain pines, Amos, and a hundred yards of stout canvas I’d get up on the top of this thing, d’ye see, and I’d rig such a jury-mast as would send her humming into Boston Bay.  Then I’d break her up and sell her for what she was worth, and turn a few pieces over the business.  But she’s a heavy old craft, and that’s a fact, though even now she might do a knot or two an hour if she had a hurricane behind her.  But what is it, Amos?”

The young hunter was standing with his ear slanting, his head bent forwards, and his eyes glancing sideways like a man who listens intently.  He was about to answer when De Catinat gave a cry and pointed to the back of the cave.

“Look at the crack now.”

It had widened by a foot since they had noticed it last, until it was now no longer a crack.  It was a pass.

“Let us go through,” said the captain.

“It can but come out on the other side.”

“Then let us see the other side.”

He led the way and the other two followed him.  It was very dark as they advanced, with high dripping ice walls on either side and one little zigzagging slit of blue sky above their heads.  Tripping and groping their way, they stumbled along until suddenly the passage grew wider and opened out into a large square of flat ice.  The berg was level in the centre and sloped upwards from that point to the high cliffs which bounded it on each side.  In three directions this slope was very steep, but in one it slanted up quite gradually, and the constant thawing had grooved the surface with a thousand irregularities by which an active man could ascend.  With one impulse they began all three to clamber up until a minute later they were standing not far from the edge of the summit, seventy feet above the sea, with a view which took in a good fifty miles of water.  In all that fifty miles there was no sign of life, nothing but the endless glint of the sun upon the waves.

Captain Ephraim whistled.  “We are out of luck,” said he.

Amos Green looked about him with startled eyes.  “I cannot understand it,” said he.  “I could have sworn—­By the eternal, listen to that!” The clear call of a military bugle rang out in the morning air.  With a cry of amazement they all three craned forward and peered over the edge.