Chapter Twenty Six.
An Adventure on the Pack – Separated from the Ship – Despair – The Dream of Home – Under Way Once More
Nothing in the shape of adventure came amiss to Rory. He was always ready for any kind of “fun,” as he called every kind of excitement. Such a thing as fear I do not believe Rory ever felt, and, as for failing in anything he undertook, he never even dreamt of such a thing. He had often proposed escapades and wild adventures to his companions at which they hung fire. Rory’s line of argument was very simple and unsophisticated. It may be summed up in three sentences – first, “Sure we’ve only to try and we’re bound to do it.” If that did not convince Allan or Ralph, he brought up his first-class reserve, “Let us try, anyhow;” and if that failed, his second reserve, “It’s bound to come right in the end.” Had Rory been seized by a lion or tiger, and borne away to the bush, those very words would have risen to his lips to bring him solace, “It’s bound to come right in the end.”
The few days’ delay that succeeded the accident to the Arrandoon, while she had to be listed over, and things were made as uncomfortable as they always are when a ship is lying on an uneven keel, threw Rory back upon his books for enjoyment. That and writing verses, and, fiddle in hand composing music to his own words, enabled him to pass the day with some degree of comfort; but when Mr Stevenson one morning, on giving his usual report at breakfast-time, happened to say, —
“Ice rather more open to-day, sir; a slight breeze from the west, and about a foot of rise and fall among the bergs; two or three bears about a mile to leeward, and a few seals,” then Rory jumped up.
“Will you go, Allan,” he cried, “and bag a bear? Ralph hasn’t done breakfast.”
“Bide a wee, young gentleman,” said McBain, smiling. “I really imagined I was master of the ship.”
“I beg your pardon, Captain McBain,” said Rory, at once; and with all becoming gravity he saluted, and continued, “Please, sir, may I go on shore?”
“Certainly not,” was the reply; and the captain added, “No, boy, no. We value even Rory, for all the trouble he gives us, more than many bears.”
Rory got hold of his fiddle, and his feelings found vent in music. But no sooner had McBain retired to his cabin than Rory threw down his much beloved instrument and jumped up.
“Bide a wee; I’ll manage,” he cried.
“Doctor,” he added, disarranging all the medico’s hair with his hand – Sandy’s legs were under the mahogany, so he could not speedily retaliate – “Sandy, mon, I’ll manage. It’ll be a vera judeecious arrangement.”
Then he was off, and presently back, all smiles and rejoicing:
“Come on, Allan, dear boy,” he cried. “We’re going, both of us, and Seth and one man, and we’re going to carry a plank to help us across the ice. Finish your breakfast, baby Ralph. I wouldn’t disturb myself for the world if I were you.”
“I don’t mean to,” said Ralph, helping himself to more toast and marmalade.
“What are you grinning at now?” asked Rory of the surgeon.
“To think,” said Sandy, laughing outright, “that our poor little boy Rory couldn’t be trusted on the ice without Seth and a plank. Ha, ha, ha! my conscience!”
“Doctor,” said Rory.
“Well?” said the doctor.
“Whustle,” cried Rory, making a face.
“I’ll whustle ye,” said Sandy, springing up. But Rory was off.
On the wiry shoulders of Seth the plank was borne as easily as if it had been only an oar; the man carried the rope and sealing clubs. The plank did them good service, for whenever the space between two bergs was too wide for a safe leap it was laid down, and over they went. They thus made good progress.
There was a little motion among the ice, but nothing to signify. The pieces approached each other gradually until within a certain distance. Then was the time to leap, and at once, too, without fear and hesitation. If you did hesitate, and made up your mind to leap a moment after, you might fail to reach the next berg, and this meant a ducking at the very least. But a ducking of this kind is no joke, as the writer of these lines knows from experience. You strip off your clothes to wring out the superabundance of water, and by the time you put them on again, your upper garments, at all events, are frozen harder than parchment. You have to construe the verb salto (Salto– I leap, or jump) from beginning to end before you feel on good terms with yourself again. But falling into the sea between two bergs may not end with a mere ducking. A man may be sucked by the current under the ice, or he may instantly fall a prey to that great greedy monster, the Greenland shark. Well the brute loves to devour a half-dead seal, but a man is caviare to his maw. Again, if you are not speedily rescued, the bergs may come slowly together and grind you to pulp. But our heroes escaped scot-free. So did the bears which they had come to shoot.
“It is provoking!” said Rory. “Let us follow them a mile or so, at all events.”
They did, and came in sight of one – an immensely great brute of a Bruin – who, after stopping about a minute to study them, set off again shambling over the bergs. Then he paused, and then started off once more; and this he did many times, but he never permitted them to get within shot.
All this time the signal of recall was floating at the masthead of the Arrandoon, but they never saw it. They began to notice at last, though, that the bergs were wider apart, so they wisely determined to give up the chase and return.
Return? Yes, it is only a little word – hardly a simpler one to be found in the whole English vocabulary, whether to speak or to spell; and yet it is a word that has baffled thousands. It is a word that we should never forget when entering upon any undertaking in which there is danger to either ourselves or others. It is a word great generals keep well in view; probably it was just that word “return” which prevented the great Napoleon from landing half a million of men on our shores with the view of conquering the country. The man of ambition was afraid he might find a difficulty in getting his Frenchmen back, and that Englishmen would not be over kind to them.
Rory and his party could see the flag of recall now, and they could see also the broad black fan being waved from the crow’s-nest to expedite their movements. So they made all the haste in their power. There was no leaping now, the plank had to be laid across the chasms constantly. But at last they succeeded in getting just half-way to the ship, when, to their horror, they discovered that all further advance was a sheer impossibility! A lane of open water effectually barred their progress. It was already a hundred yards wide at least, and it was broadening every minute. South and by west, as far as eye could reach, stretched this canal, and north-west as well. They were drifting away on a loose portion of the pack, leaving their ship behind them.
Their feelings were certainly not to be envied. They knew the whole extent of their danger, and dared not depreciate it. It was coming on to blow; already the face of that black lane of water was covered with angry little ripples. If the wind increased to a gale, the chances of regaining their vessel were small indeed; more likely they would be blown out to sea, as men have often been under similar circumstances, and so perish miserably on the berg on which they stood. To be sure, they were to leeward, and the Arrandoon was a steamer; there was some consolation in that, but it was damped, on the other hand, by the recollection that, though a steamer, she was a partially disabled one. It would take hours before she could readjust her ballast and temporarily make good her leak, and hours longer ere she could force and forge her way to the lane of water, through the mile of heavy bergs that intervened. Meanwhile, what might not happen?
Both Rory and Allan were by this time good ice-men, and had there been but a piece of ice big enough to bear their weight, and nothing more, they could have embarked thereon and ferried themselves across, using as paddles the butt-ends of their rifles. But there was nothing of the sort; the bay ice had all been ground up; there was nothing save the great green-sided, snow-topped bergs. And so they could only wait and hope for the best.
“It’ll all come right in the end,” said Rory.
He said this many times; but as the weary hours went by, and the lane widened and widened, till, from being a lane, it looked a Jake, the little sentence that had always brought him comfort before seemed trite to even Rory himself.
The increasing motion of the berg on which they stood did not serve to reassure them, and the cold they had, from their forced inactivity, to endure, would have damped the boldest spirits. For a time they managed to keep warm by walking or running about the berg, but afterwards movement itself became painful, so that they had but little heart to take exercise.
The whole hull of the Arrandoon was hidden from their view behind the hummocky ice, and thus they could not tell what was going on on deck, but they could see no smoke arising from the funnel, and this but served further to dishearten them.
Even gazing at those lanes of water that so often open up in the very midst of a field of ice, is apt to stir up strange thoughts in one’s mind, especially if one be, like Rory, of a somewhat poetical and romantic disposition. The very blackness of the water impresses you; its depth causes a feeling akin to awe; you know, as if by instinct, that it is deep – terribly, eeriesomely deep. It lies smiling in the sunshine as to surface, but all is the blackness of darkness below. Up here it is all day; down there, all night. The surface of the water seems to divide two worlds – a seen and an unseen, a known and an unknown and mysterious – life and death!
Tired at last of roaming like caged bears up and down the berg, one by one they seated themselves on the sunny side of a small hummock. They huddled together for warmth, but they did not care to talk much. Their very souls seemed heavy, their bodies seemed numbed and frozen, but their heads were hot, and they felt very drowsy, yet bit their lips and tongues lest they might fall into that strange slumber from which it is said men wake no more.
They talked not at all. The last words were spoken by Seth. Rory remembered them.
“I’m old,” he was muttering; “my time’s a kind o’ up; but it do seem hard on these younkers. Guess I’d give the best puma’s skin ever I killed, just to see Rory safe. Guess I’d – ”
Rory’s eyes were closed, he heard no more. He was dreaming. Dreaming of what? you ask me. I answer, in the words of Lover, —
“Ask of the sailor youth, when far
His light barque bounds o’er ocean’s foam
What charms him most when evening star
Smiles o’er the wave? To dream of home.”
Yes, Rory was dreaming of home. All the home he knew, poor lad! He was in the Castle of Arrandoon. Seeing, but all unseen, he stood in the cosy tartan parlour where he had spent so many happy hours. A bright fire was burning in the grate, the curtains were drawn, in her easy-chair sat Allan’s mother with her work on her lap, the great deerhound lay on the hearthrug asleep, and Helen Edith was bending over her harp. How boy Rory longed to rush forward and take her by the hand! But even in his partial sleep he knew this was but a dream, and he feared to move lest he might break the sweet spell. But languor, pain, and cold, all were forgotten while the vision lasted.
But list! a horn seems to sound beyond the castle moat. Rory, in his dream, wonders that Helen hears it not; then the boy starts to his feet on the snow. The vision has fled, and the sound of the horn resolves itself into the shout, —
“Ahoy – oy – hoy! Ahoy! hoy!”
Every one is on his feet at the same time, though both Allan and Rory stagger and fall again. But, behold! a boat comes dancing down the lane of water towards them, and a minute after they are all safe on board.
The labour of getting that boat over the ice had been tremendous. It had been a labour of love, however, and the men had worked cheerily and boldly, and never flinched a moment, until it was safely launched in the open water and our heroes were in it.
The Arrandoon, the men told them, had got up steam, and in a couple of hours at most she would reach the water. Meanwhile they, by the captain’s orders, were to land on the other side, and make themselves as comfortable as possible until her arrival.
Rory and Allan were quite themselves again now, and so, too, was honest Seth, —
“Though, blame me,” said he, “if I didn’t think this old trapper’s time had come. Not that that’d matter a sight, but I did feel for you youngsters, blame me if I didn’t;” and he dashed his coat-sleeve rapidly across his face as he spoke.
And now a fire was built and coffee made, and Stevenson then opened the Norwegian chest – a wonderful contrivance, in which a dinner may be kept hot for four-and-twenty hours, and even partially cooked. Up arose the savoury steam of a glorious Irish stew.
“How mindful of the captain?” said Allan.
“It was Ralph that sent the dinner,” said Stevenson, “and he sent with it his compliments to Rory.”
“Bless his old heart,” cried Rory. “I don’t think I’ll ever chaff him again about the gourmandising propensities of the Saxon race.”
“And the doctor,” continued the mate, “sent you some blankets, Mr Rory. There they are, sir; and he told me to give you this note, if I found you alive.”
The note was in the Scottish dialect, and ran as follows: —
“My conscience, Rory! some folks pay dear for their whustle. But keep up your heart, ma wee laddie. It’s a vera judeecious arrangement.”
In a few days more the Arrandoon had made good her repairs, and as the western wind had freshened, and was blowing what would have been a ten-knot breeze in the open sea, the steamer got up steam and the sailing-ship canvas, and together they took the loose ice, and made their way slowly to the eastward. The bergs, though some distance asunder, were still sufficiently near to considerably impede their way, and, for fear of accident, the Arrandoon took the cockle-shell, as she was always called now, in tow.
For many days the ships went steadily eastward, which proved to them how extensive the pack had been. Sometimes they came upon large tracts of open water, many miles in extent, and across this they sailed merrily and speedily enough, considering that neither of the vessels had as yet shipped her rudder. This they had determined not to do until they were well clear of the very heavy ice, or until the swell went down. So they were steered entirely by boats pulling ahead of them.
Open water at last, and the cockle-shell bids the big ships adieu, spreads her white sails to the breeze, and, swanlike, goes sailing away for the distant isle of Jan Mayen. Ay, and the big ships themselves must now very soon part company, the Scotia to bear up for the green shores of our native land, the Arrandoon for regions as yet unknown.
Chapter Twenty Seven.
Working along the Pack Edge – Among the Seals again – A Bumper Ship – Adventures on the Ice – Ted Wilson’s Promotion
The Arrandoon was steaming slowly along the pack edge, wind still westerly, the Canny Scotia, with all canvas exposed, a mile or more to leeward of her. Both were heading in the same direction, north and by east, for McBain and our heroes had determined not to desert Silas until he really had what he called a voyage – in other words, a full ship.
“We can spare the time, you know,” the captain had said to Ralph; “a fortnight, will do it, and I dare say Rory here doesn’t object to a little more sport before going away to the far north.”
“That I don’t,” Rory had replied.
“If we fall among the old seals, a fortnight will do it.”
“Ay,” Allan had said, “and won’t old Silas be happy!”
“Yes,” from McBain; “and, after all, to be able to give happiness to others is certainly one of the greatest pleasures in this world.”
Dear reader, just a word parenthetically. I am so sure that what McBain said is true, that I earnestly advise you to try the experiment suggested by his words, for great is the reward, even in this world, of those who can conquer self and endeavour to bring joy to others.
The Arrandoon steamed along the pack edge, but it must not be supposed that this was a straight line, or anything like it. Indeed it was very much like any ordinary coastline, for here was a bay and yonder a cape, and yonder again, where the ice is heavier, a bold promontory. But Greenlandmen call a bay a “bight,” and a cape they call a “point-end.” Let us adopt their nomenclature.
The Canny Scotia, then, avoided these point-ends; she kept well out to sea, well away from the pack, for there was not over-much wind, and Silas Grig had no wish to be beset again. But the Arrandoon, on the other hand, steamed, as I have said, in a straight line. She scorned to double a point, but went steadily on her course, ploughing her way through the bergs. There was one advantage in this: she could the more easily discover the seals, for in the month of May these animals, having done their duty by their young, commence their return journey to the north, the polar regions being their home par excellence. They are in no hurry getting back, however. They like to enjoy themselves, and usually for every one day’s progress they make, they lie two or three on the ice. The capes, or point-ends, are favourite positions with them, and on the bergs they may be seen lying in scores, nor if the sun be shining with any degree of strength are they at all easily disturbed. It is their summer, and they try to make the best of it. Hark now to that shout from the crow’s-nest of the Arrandoon.
“A large patch of seals in sight, sir.”
Our heroes pause in their walk, and gaze upwards; from the deck nothing is visible to windward save the great ice-pack.
“Where away?” cries Stevenson.
“On the weather bow, sir, and a good mile in through the pack.”
“What do you think, sir?” says Stevenson, addressing his commander. “Shall we risk taking the ice again?”
“Risk, Stevenson?” is the reply. “Why, man, yes; we’ll risk anything to do old Silas a good turn. We’ll risk more yet, mate, before the ship’s head is turned homewards.”
Then the ship is stopped, and signals are made to Silas, who instantly changes his course, and, after a vast deal of tacking and half-tacking, bears down upon them, and being nearly alongside, gets his main-yard aback, and presently lowers a boat and comes on board the Arrandoon.
Our heroes crowd around him.
“Why,” they say, “you are a perfect stranger; it is a whole week since we’ve seen you.”
“Ay,” says Silas, “and a whole week without seeing a seal – isn’t it astonishing?”
“Ah! but they’re in sight now,” says McBain. “I’m going to take the ice, and I’ll tow you in, and if you’re not a bumper ship before a week, then this isn’t the Arrandoon, that’s all.”
Silas is all smiles; he rubs his hands, and finally laughs outright, then he claps his hand on his leg, and, —
“I was sure of it,” says Silas, “soon as ever I saw your signal. ‘Matie,’ says I, ‘yonder is a signal from the Arrandoon. I’m wanted on board; seals is in sight, ye maybe sure. Matie,’ says I, ‘luck’s turned again;’ and with that I gives him such a dig in the ribs that he nearly jumped out of the nest.”
“Make the signal to the Scotia, Stevenson,” says McBain, “to clew up, and to get all ready for being taken in tow. Come below, Captain Grig, lunch is on the table.”
Fairly seated at the table, honest Silas rubbed his hands again and looked with a delighted smile at each of his friends in turn. There was a bluff heartiness about this old sailor which was very taking.
“I declare,” he said, “I feel just like a schoolboy home for a holiday?”
Rory and Silas were specially friendly.
“Rory, lad,” he remarked, after a pause, “we won’t be long together now.”
“No,” replied Rory; “and it isn’t sorry I am, but really downright sad at the thoughts of your going away and leaving us. I say, though – happy thought! – send Stevenson home with your ship and you stay with us in place of him.”
Silas laughed. “What would my owners say, boy? and what about my little wife, eh?”
“Ah! true,” said Rory; “I had forgotten.” Then, after a pause, he added, more heartily, “But we’ll meet again, won’t we?”
“Please God!” said Silas, reverently. “I think,” Rory added, “I would know your house among a thousand, you have told me so much about it – the blue-grey walls, the bay windows, the garden, with its roses and – and – ”
“The green paling,” Silas put in. “Ah, yes! the green paling, to be sure; how could I have forgotten that? Well, I’ll come and see you; and won’t you bring out the green ginger that day, Silas!”
“And the bun,” added Silas. “And the bun,” repeated Rory after him. “And won’t my little wife make you welcome, too! you may bet your fiddle on that!”
Then these two sworn friends grasped hands over the table, and the conversation dropped for a time.
But there perhaps never was a much happier Greenland skipper than Silas Grig, when he found his ship lying secure among the ice, with thousands on thousands of old seals all around him. The weather continued extremely fine for a whole week. The little wind there had been, died all away, and the sun shone more warmly and brightly than it had done since the Arrandoon came to the country. The seals were so cosy that they really did not seem to mind being shot, and those that were scared off one piece of ice almost immediately scrambled on to another. “Fire away!” they seemed to say; “we are so numerous that we really won’t miss a few of us. Only don’t disturb us more than you can help.”
So the seals hugged the ice, basking in the bright sunshine, either sleeping soundly or gazing dreamily around them with their splendid eyes, or scratching their woolly ribs with their flippers for want of something to do.
And bang, bang, bang! went the rifles; they never seemed to cease from the noon of night until mid-day, nor from mid-day until the noon of night again.
The draggers of skins went in pairs for safety, and thus many a poor fellow who tumbled into the sea between the bergs, escaped with a ducking when otherwise he would have lost his life.
Ralph – long-legged, brawny-chested Saxon Ralph – was among “the ducked,” as Rory called the unfortunates. He came to a space of water which was too wide even for him. He would not be beaten, though, so he pitched his rifle over first by way of beginning the battle. Then he thought, by swinging his heavy cartridge-bag by its shoulder-strap the weight would help to carry him over. He called this jumping from a tangent. It was a miserable failure. But the best of the fun – so Rory said, though it could not have been fun to Ralph – was this: when he found himself floundering in the water he let go the bag of cartridges, which at once began to sink, but in sinking caught his heel, and pulled him for the moment under water. Poor Ralph! his feelings may be better imagined than described.
“I made sure a shark had me!” he said, quietly, when by the help of his friend Rory, he had been brought safely to bank.
It was not very often that Ralph had a mishap of any kind, but, having come to grief in this way, it was not likely that Rory would throw away so good a chance of chaffing him.
He suddenly burst out laughing at luncheon that day, at a time when nobody was speaking, and when apparently there was nothing at all to laugh about.
“What now, Rory? what now, boy?” said McBain, with a smile of anticipation.
“Oh!” cried Rory, “if you had only seen my big English brother’s face when he thought the shark had him!”
“Was it funny?” said Allan, egging him on.
“Funny!” said Rory. “Och I now, funny is no name for it. You should have seen the eyes of him! – and his jaw fall! – and that big chin of his. You know, Englishmen have a lot of chin, and – ”
“And Irishmen have a lot of cheek,” cried Ralph. “Just wait till I get you on deck, Row boy.”
“I’d make him whustle,” suggested the doctor.
“Troth,” Rory went on, “it was very nearly the death o’ me. And to see him kick and flounder! Sure I’d pity the shark that got one between the eyes from your foot, baby Ralph.”
“Well,” said Ralph, “it was nearly the death of me, anyhow, having to take off all my clothes and wring them on top of the snow.”
“Oh! but,” continued Rory, assuming seriousness, and addressing McBain, “you ought to have seen Ralph just then, sir. That was the time to see my baby brother to advantage. Neptune is nobody to him. Troth, Ray, if you’d lived in the good old times, it’s a gladiator they’d have made of you entirely.”
Here came a low derisive laugh from Cockie’s cage, and Ralph pitched a crust of bread at the bird, and shook his fingers at Rory.
But Rory kept out of Ralph’s way for a whole hour after this, and by that time the storm had blown clean away, so Rory was safe.
Allan had his turn next day. The danger in walking on the ice was chiefly owing to the fact that the edges of many of the bergs had been undermined by the waves and the recent swell, so that they were apt to break off and precipitate the unwary pedestrian into the water.
Here is Allan’s little adventure, and it makes one shudder to think how nearly it led him to being an actor in a terrible tragedy. He was trudging on after the seals with rifle at full cock, for he expected a shot almost immediately, when, as he was about to leap, the snowy edge of the berg gave way, and down he went. Instinctively he held his rifle out to his friend, who grasped it with both hands, the muzzle against his breast, and thus pulled him out. It seemed marvellous that the rifle did not go off.
(Both these adventures are sketched from the life.)
When safe to bank, and when he noticed the manner in which he had been helped out, poor Allan felt sick, there is no other name for it.
“Oh, Ralph, Ralph!” he said, clutching his friend by the shoulder to keep himself from falling, “what if I had killed you?”
When told of the incident that evening after dinner, McBain, after a momentary silence, said quietly, —
“I’m not sorry such a thing should have happened, boys; it ought to teach you caution; and it teaches us all that there is Some One in whose hands we are; Some One to look after us even in moments of extremest peril.”
But I think Allan loved Ralph even better after this.
Two weeks’ constant sealing; two weeks during which the crews of the Arrandoon and Canny Scotia never sat down to a regular meal, and never lay down for two consecutive hours of repose, only eating when hungry and sleeping when they could no longer keep moving; two weeks during which nobody knew what o’clock it was at any particular time, or which was east or west, or whether it were day or night. Two weeks, then the seals on the ice disappeared as if by magic, for the frost was coming.
“Let them go,” said Silas, shaking McBain warmly by the hand. “Thanks to you, sir, I’m a bumper ship. Why, man, I’m full to the hatches. Low freeboard and all that sort of thing. Plimsoll wouldn’t pass us out of any British harbour. But, with fair weather and God’s help, sir, we’ll get safely home.”
“And now,” McBain replied, “there isn’t a moment to lose. We must get out of here, Captain Grig, or the frost will serve us a trick as it did before.”
With some difficulty the ships were got about and headed once more for the open sea.
None too soon, though, for there came again that strange, ethereal blue into the sky, which, from their experiences of the last black frost, they had learned to dread. The thermometer sank, and sank, and sank, till far down below zero.
The Arrandoon took her “chummy ship” in tow.
“Go ahead at full speed,” was the order.
No, none too soon, for in two hours’ time the great steam-hammer had to be set to work to break the newly-formed bay ice at the bows of the Arrandoon, and fifty men were sent over the side to help her on. With iron-shod pikes they smashed the ice, with long poles they pushed the bergs, singing merrily as they worked, working merrily as they sang, laughing, joking, stamping, shouting, and cheering as ever and anon the great ship made another spurt, and tore along for fifty or a hundred yards. Handicapped though she was by having the Scotia in tow, the Arrandoon fought the ice as if she had been some mighty giant, and every minute the distance between her and the open water became less, till at last it could be seen even from the quarter-deck. But the frost seemed to grow momentarily more intense, and the bay- ce stronger and harder between the bergs. Never mind, that only stimulated the men to greater exertions. It was a battle for freedom, and they meant to win. With well-meaning though ridiculous doggerel, Ted Wilson led the music, —
“Work and keep warm, boys; heave and keep hot,
Jack Frost thinks he’s clever; we’ll show him he’s not.
Beyond is the sea, boys;
Let us fight and get free, boys;
One thing will keep boiling, and that is the pot.
With a heave O!
Push and she’ll go.
To work and to fight is the bold sailor’s lot.
Heave O – O – O!
“Go fetch me the lubber who won’t bear a hand,
We’ll feed him on blubber, we’ll stuff him with sand.
But yonder our ships, boys,
Ere they get in the nips, boys,
We’ll wrestle and work, as long’s we can stand,
Then cheerily has it, men,
Heave O – O – O!
Merrily has it, men,
Off we go, O – O – O!”
Yes, reader, and away they went, and in one more hour they were clear of the ice, the Arrandoon had cast the Scotia off, and banked her fires, for, together with her consort, she was to sail, not steam, down to the island of Jan Mayen, where they were to take on board the sleigh-dogs, and bid farewell to Captain Cobb, the bold Yankee astronomer. – There was but little wind, but they made the most of what there was. Silas dined on board that day, as usual. They were determined to have as much of the worthy old sailor as they could. But before dinner one good action was performed by McBain in Captain Grig’s presence. First he called all hands, and ordered them aft; then he asked Ted Wilson to step forward, and addressed him briefly as follows: