“Now, my father,” continued Beechnut, “had intended to take this old family clock with him to America, and he now conceived the idea of hiding his treasure in the weights.  The weights were formed of two round tin canisters filled with something very heavy.  My father said he did not know whether it was shot or sand.  He unsoldered the bottom from these canisters, and found that the filling was shot.  He poured out the shot, put his gold pieces in in place of it, and then filled up all the interstices between and around the gold pieces with sand, to prevent the money from jingling.  Then he soldered the bottom of the canisters on again, and no one would have known that the weights were anything more than ordinary clock-weights.  He then packed the clock in a box, and put the box in his trunk.  It did not take up a great deal of room, for he did not take the case of the clock, but only the face and the works and the two weights, which last he packed carefully and securely in the box, one on each side of the clock itself.

“When we got to Havre, all our baggage was examined at the Custom House, and the officers allowed it all to pass.  When they came to the clock, my father showed them the little door and the bird inside, and they said it was very curious.  They did not pay any attention to the weights at all.

“When we went on board of the vessel our chests were put by the side of an immense heap of baggage upon the deck, where some seamen were at work lowering it down into the hold through a square opening in the deck of the ship.  As for the trunk, my father took that with him to the place where he was going to be himself during the voyage.  This place was called the steerage.  It was crowded full of men, women, and children, all going to America.  Some talked French, some German, some Dutch, and there were ever so many babies that were too little to talk at all.  Pretty soon the vessel sailed.

“We did not meet with anything remarkable on the voyage, except that once we saw an iceberg.”

“What is that?” asked Madeline.

“It is a great mountain of ice,” replied Beechnut, “floating about in the sea on the top of the water.  I don’t know how it comes to be there.”

“I should not think it would float upon the top of the water,” said Phonny.  “All the ice that I ever saw in the water sinks into it.”

“It does not sink to the bottom,” said Madeline.

“No,” replied Phonny, “but it sinks down until the top of the ice is just level with the water.  But Beechnut says that his iceberg rose up like a mountain.”

“Yes,” said Beechnut, “it was several hundred feet high above the water, all glittering in the sun.  And I think that if you look at any small piece of ice floating in the water, you will see that a small part of it rises above the surface.”

“Yes,” said Phenny, “a very little.”

“It is a certain proportion of the whole mass,” rejoined Beechnut.  “They told us on board our vessel that about one-tenth part of the iceberg was above the water; the rest—­that is, nine-tenths—­was under it; so you see what an enormous big piece of ice it must have been to have only one-tenth part of it tower up so high.