The Iron Pirate by Max Pemberton

The bed in which I lay was wondrous soft and downy; and the cold gave me deep sleep, so that I awoke at a late hour to find the sun streaming through my rock window, and the negro telling me, as he was wont to do in the ship, that my bath was ready. The bath-room lay away a few paces from my chamber; but the water that flowed from the silver taps was icily cold; and I shivered after my plunge, though the beauty and luxury of the place compelled my admiration. It was no ordinary bath-room, even in its arrangement, the great well of water being large enough to swim in, and the basin of pure white marble; while soft and brightly-coloured rugs were laid on the couches around, and the arched roof was Eastern in design and decoration. When we returned to my sleeping-place, I found the bed curtained off, leaving a commodious apartment, with books, armchairs, a writing-table, and a fireplace, in which a coal fire burned brightly. But the greater surprise was the view from my window, a view over a sunlit fjord, away to mountain peaks, snow-capped and shining; and between them to a vista of an endless snow-plain, white, dazzling, and not altogether unmonotonous, yet relieved by the nearer patches of green and almost garden-land which seemed to stretch towards the sea.

My new home was, as I had thought, upon the side of a fjord which led through a canyon to the outer basin. There was beach at the upper end of it, and grass-land where several canoes and kayaks lay; and I saw that many of the men who had watched the horrors of the night were working lustily now, dragging stores and barrels from a heavily-charged screw steamer which was anchored near the beach. The rocks which bound the opposite side of the bay did not appear to be cut for dwellings as on our side: but I saw trace of several passages in them; and away above them there was a small mountain peak by which a river of ice ran into the sea. But of the outer cave I could observe nothing; or of the shore itself, though away at a greater distance, over some of the ravines, I made out the clear blue of the Atlantic, and a waste of peaceful water.