Kitabı oku: «The Cruise of the Snowbird: A Story of Arctic Adventure», sayfa 7
Chapter Ten
Onshore in Shetland – A Family of Guides – A Wild Ride and a Primitive Lunch – Westward Ho! – Racing a Whale
“What shall we do and where shall we go?” These were the questions which naturally presented themselves for solution to our three heroes, on first stepping out of their boat on Lerwick beach.
“We’ll take a turn up the town,” suggested Allan, “and see the place.”
“And then go and have lunch somewhere,” said Ralph.
“To be sure,” said Rory. “An Englishman will never be long without thinking about eating. But let us take pot-luck for the lunch. We’ll just get a quarter of a dozen of Shetland ponies, that’ll be one to every one of the three of us, and ride away over the island. We’ll fall on our feet, never fear.”
“More likely,” said Allan, with a laugh, “to fall on our heads and break our necks; but never mind, I’m ready.”
There were many listeners to this conversation. The town “loafers” of Lerwick are not a whit more polite than town “loafers” anywhere else, and seeing three smartly-dressed young yachtsmen, evidently the owners of the beautiful vessel that lay at anchor in the harbour, they gathered around them, crowded them in fact, and were profuse in their offers of their services as guides to either town or country. But for the present our friends declined their assistance, and set off on a brisk walk away up the curious straggling narrow street. Here were few shops worth a second look; the houses stand end on to the pavements, not in a straight row, but simply anyhow, and seem to shoulder the passengers into the middle of the road in the most unceremonious fashion. The street itself was muddy and fishy, and they were not a bit sorry when they found themselves out in the open country, quite at the other end of it. By this time they had shaken themselves clear of the crowd, or almost, for they still had four satellites. One of these was quite a giant of a fellow, with a pipe in his mouth and a tree in his right hand by way of a walking-stick, and looking altogether so rough and unkempt that he might have been taken for the presiding genius of this wild island. In striking contrast with this fellow there stood near him a pretty and interesting-looking young girl, with a little peat-creel on her back, and knitting materials in her hand, which betokened industry. She had yellow hair floating, over her shoulders, and eyes as blue as summer seas.
“My daughter, gentlemen,” said the giant, “and here is my son.”
Our heroes could not refrain from laughing when they looked at the latter. Such a mite he was, such a Hop-o’-my-thumb, such a mop of a head, the hair of which defied confinement by the old Tam o’ Shanter stuck on the top of it! This young urchin was rich in rags but wreathed in smiles.
This interesting family were engaged forthwith as guides.
They would all three go, not one would be left behind: the father and son would run, the daughter would ride, and the price of their services would be half-a-crown each, including the use of the ponies.
Oh! these ponies, I do so wish I could describe them to you. They were so small, to begin with, that Ralph and Allan looked quite ridiculous on their backs, for their feet almost touched the ground. Rory looked better on his charger. The ponies’ tails swept the heather, their coats were like the coats of Skye terriers, and their morsels of heads were buried in hair, all save the nose. Cobby as to body were these diminutive horses, and cunning as to eye – that is, whenever an eye could be seen it displayed cunning and mischief.
Rory mounted and rode like a Centaur, the young lady guide sat like a Shetland-queen. But woe is me for Ralph and Allan, – they were hardly on when they were off again. It must be said for them, however, that they stuck to their bridles if they couldn’t stick to the saddles, and again and again they mounted their fiery steeds with the same ignominious results. Two legs seemed enough for those ponies to walk upon, and it did not matter for the time being whether they were, hind legs or fore legs. They could stand, on their heads too, turn somersaults, and roll over on their backs, and do all sorts of pretty tricks.
“It’s only their fun,” cried Rory, “they’ll shake down presently.”
“Shake down!” said Ralph, rubbing his leg with a wry face. “I’m pretty well shaken down. Why, I don’t believe there is a whole bone in my body. – Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!”
But when the ponies had gone through their performances to their own entire satisfaction, and done quite enough to maintain their name and fame as wild Shetland ponies, they suffered their riders to keep their seats, but tossed their manes in the air, as if to clear their eyesight for the run they were now determined to have.
Then off started the cavalcade, rushing like a hairy hurricane along the mountain road. Swiftly as they went, however, lo! and behold, at every turn of the road the giant and his little boy were visible, the former vaulting along on his pole, the latter running with the speed of a wild deer.
It was early summer in Shetland; the top of lonely Mount Bressay was still shrouded in snow, but all the moorlands were green with grass and heather, and gay with wild hyacinth and crimson-belled bilberry bushes; the light breeze that blew over the islands and across the blue sea was balmy and yet bracing – it was a breeze that raised the spirits; yes, and it did something else, it appealed to the inner man, as Ralph expressed, and so, when after a ride of over a dozen miles a well-known roadside hostelry hove in sight, our heroes positively hailed it with a cheer. What mattered it that the little parlour into which they were shown was destitute of a carpet and possessed of chairs of deal? It was clean and quiet, the tablecloth was spotless as the snows of Ben Rona, the cakes were crisp, the bread was white, the butter was redolent of the fragrant herbage that the cows had browsed, and the rich milk was purer and better far than any wine that could have been placed before them; and when hot and steaming smoked haddocks were added to the fare, why they would not have changed places with a king in his banqueting-hall.
All confessed they had never spent a more enjoyable forenoon. The ride back was especially delightful. Before they left their guides to return on board, little Norna, the giant’s lovely daughter, produced from the mysterious depths of her peat-creel quite a wonderful assortment of gauzy mits and gauntlets, and tiny little shawls, and queer old-fashioned head-dresses, all knitted by her own fair fingers. Of course they bought some of each as souvenirs of their visit to the sea-girdled mainland of Shetland, and they paid for them so liberally too, that the tears stood in the girl’s blue eyes as they bade her good-bye. Norna had never been so rich in her life before.
Captain McBain was in his cabin poring over a chart when our heroes returned.
“Bravo! boys,” he said, heartily; “you’re up to time, and now, as the breeze is from the south with a point or two of east in it, I think we’d better make sail without delay. We’ll work her quietly through the sound. We’ll keep to the south of Yell, but once past Fiedland Point, good-bye to the British Islands for many a day. What more can we wish, boys, than a fair wind and a clear sea, light hearts, and a ship that can go?”
“What more indeed?” said Rory.
“Are we going to touch at Faroe and Iceland?” asked Ralph.
“That,” said McBain, “is, of course, as you wish. I’m at and in your service.”
“Yes, yes,” said Ralph; “but we don’t forget you are our adviser as well, and our sea-father.”
“Well,” replied McBain, “I’ve taken the liberty of writing to your real father to say that we thought it better to leave Faroe out of the chart, for the voyage out, at all events. We don’t know what may be before us, boys, nor how precious time may be.”
That evening about sunset old Ap’s boatswain’s pipe was heard high above the whistling wind; the breeze had freshened, and sail was being taken in, and the starboard courses were hauled farther aft. They passed very close to some of the numerous outlying islands, the last land their eyes would rest upon for some time. The tops of these isles were smooth and green, their sides were beetling cliffs and rocks of brown, with the waves breaking into foam at the foot, and white-winged gulls wheeling high around them. Little sandy alcoves there were too, where dun seals lay basking in the evening sunshine, some of whom lazily lifted their heads and gazed after the yacht, wondering probably whether she were not some gigantic gannet or cormorant. And the Snowbird sailed on and left them to wonder. The sun sank red behind the waves, the stars shone brightly down from a cloudless sky, and the moon’s pale crescent glimmered faintly in the west, while the wind kept steady to a point, the yacht rising and falling on the waves with a motion so uniform, that even Ralph – who, as regards walking, was the worst sailor of the three – felt sure he had his sea-legs, and could walk as well as any Jack Tar that ever went afloat. The night was so fine that no one cared to go below until it was quite late.
They needed their pea-jackets on all the same.
When morning broke there was not a bit of land to be seen, not even a distant mountain top for the eye to rest upon.
“Well, boys,” said McBain, when they all met together on the quarter-deck, “how did you enjoy your first night on blue water? How did you sleep?”
“I slept like a top,” said Rory.
“I believe,” said Allan, looking at Ralph, “we slept like three tops.”
“Like three tops, yes,” assented Ralph.
“Oh! I’m sure you didn’t, Ralph,” said Rory; “I wakened about seven bells in the morning watch, just for a moment, you know, and you were snoring like a grampus. And tops don’t snore, do they?”
“And how do you know a grampus does?” asked McBain, smiling.
“Troth,” said Rory, “it’s a figure of speech entirely.”
“But isn’t Rory getting nautical?” said Ralph; “didn’t you observe he said ‘seven bells’ instead of half-past three, or three-thirty?”
“Three-thirty indeed!” cried Rory, in affected disdain. “Ha! ha! ha! I can’t help laughing at all at all; 3:30! just fancy a fellow talking like an old Bradshaw, while standing on the white deck of a fine yacht like this, with a jolly breeze blowing and all sail set alow and aloft.
“Poor little Ralph!” continued Rory, patting his friend on the shoulder, and looking quizzingly up into his face, “and didn’t he get any letters this morning! Do run down below, Allan, my boy, and see if the postman has brought the morning paper.”
“Hurrah?” shouted Allan, so loudly and so suddenly that every one stared at him in astonishment.
“Hurrah!” he shouted again, this time flinging his cap in true Highland fashion half-way up to the maintop.
“Gentlemen,” he continued, in mock heroic tones, “the last mail is about to leave – the ship, bound for the distant Castle of Arrandoon.”
And away he rushed below, leaving Ralph and Rory looking so comically puzzled that McBain burst out laughing.
“Is it leave of his seven senses,” said Rory, seriously, “that poor Allan is after taking? And can you really laugh at such an accident, Captain McBain? it’s myself that is astonished at you?”
“Ah! but lad,” said McBain, “I’m in the secret.”
Allan was on deck again in a minute.
He was waving a basket aloft.
“Helen’s pigeon, boys! Helen’s pigeon!” he was crying, with the tears actually in his eyes. “I’d forgotten Peter had it till now.”
Ten minutes afterwards the tiny missive, beginning “At sea” and ending “All’s well,” was written, and attached to the strong bird’s leg. It was examined carefully, and carefully and cautiously fed, then a message was whispered to it by Rory – a message such as a poet might send; a kiss was pressed upon its bonnie back, and then it was thrown up, and almost immediately it began to soar.
“The bravest bird that ever cleaved the air,” said Allan, with enthusiasm. “I’ve flown it four hundred miles and over.”
In silence they watched it in its circling flight, and to their joy they saw it, ere lost to view, heading away for the distant mainland of Scotland. Then they resumed walking and talking on deck.
That was about the only incident of their first day at sea. Towards evening a little stranger came on board, and glad he seemed to be to reach the deck of the Snowbird, for he must have been very tired with his long flight.
Only a yellowhammer – the most persecuted bird in all the British Islands – that was what the little stranger was. McBain had caught him and brought him below with him to the tea-table, much to the wonderment of his messmates.
“It is a common thing,” said McBain, “for land birds to follow ships, or rather to be blown out to sea, and take refuge on a vessel.” A cage was constructed for the bird, and it was hung up in the snuggery, or after-saloon.
“That’ll be the sweet little cherub,” said Rory, “that will sit up aloft and look after the life of poor Jack.”
Westwards and northwards went the Snowbird, the breeze never failing nor varying for three whole days. By this time the seagulls that had followed the ship since they left the isles, picking up the crumbs that were cast overboard from the galley, had all gone back home. They probably had wives and little fledgling families to look after, and so could not go any farther, good though the living was.
“When I see the last gull flying far away astern,” said McBain, “then I think myself fairly at sea. But isn’t it glorious weather we are having, boys? I like to begin a voyage like this, and not with a gale.”
“Why?” said Rory, “we’re all sea fast now, we wouldn’t mind it much.”
“Why?” repeated McBain, “everything shakes itself into shape thus, ay, and every man of the crew gets shaken into shape, and when it does come on to blow – and we cannot always expect fine weather – there won’t be half the rolling nor half the confusion there would otherwise be.”
“Give me your glass,” cried Rory, somewhat excitedly; “I see something.”
“What is it?” said Allan, looking in the same direction; “the great sea-serpent?”
“Indeed, no,” replied Rory, “it’s a whale, and he is going in the same direction too.”
“It’s my whale, you know,” continued Rory, when everybody had had a good peep at him, “because I saw him first.”
“Very well,” said McBain, “we are not going to dispute the proprietorship. We wish you luck with your whale; he won’t want to come on board, I dare say, and he won’t cost much to keep out there, at any rate.”
All that day Rory’s whale kept up with the ship; they could see his dark head and back, as he rose and sank on the waves; he was seldom three-quarters of a mile off, and very often much nearer.
Next day at breakfast, “How is your whale, Rory?” said Ralph.
“Oh!” said Rory, “he is in fine form this morning; I’m not sure he isn’t going to give us the slip; he is right away on the weather bow.”
“Give us the slip!” said McBain; “no, that she won’t, unless she alters her course. Steward, tell Mr Stevenson I want him.”
Stevenson was the mate, and a fine stalwart sailor he was, with dark hair and whiskers and a face as red as a brick.
“Do you think,” said McBain, “you can take another knot or two out of her without carrying anything away?”
“I think we can, sir.”
“Very well, Mr Stevenson, shake a few reefs out.”
Ap’s pipe was now heard on deck, then the trampling of feet, and a few minutes afterwards there was a saucy lurch to leeward, and, although the fiddles were across the table, Rory received the contents of a cup of hot coffee in his lap.
“Now the beauty feels it,” said McBain, with a smile of satisfaction.
“So do I,” said Rory, jumping up and shaking himself; “and its parboiled that my poor legs are entirely.”
“Let us go on deck,” said Allan, “and see the whale.”
Before the end of the forenoon watch they had their strange companion once more on the weather quarter.
“It is evident,” said McBain, “we could beat her.”
Racing a whale, reader, seems idle work, but sailors, when far away at sea, do idler things than that. They were leaning over the bulwarks after dinner that day gazing it this lonely monster of the deep, and guessing and speculating about its movements.
“I wonder,” said Ralph, “if he knows where he is going?”
“I’ve no doubt he does,” said Allan; “the same kind Hand directs his movements that makes the wind to blow and the needle to point to the north.”
“But,” said Ralph, “isn’t there something very solemn about the great beast, ploughing on and on in silence like that, and all alone too – no companion near?”
“He has left his wife in Greenland, perhaps,” said Rory, “and is going, like ourselves, to seek his fortune in the far west.”
“I wonder if he’ll find her when he returns.”
“Yes, I wonder that; for she can’t remain in the same place all the time, can she?”
“Now, boys,” said Allan, “you see what a wide, wide world of water is all around us – we must be nearly a thousand miles from land. How, if a Great Power did not guide them, could mighty fishes like that find their way about?”
“Suppose that whale had a wife,” said Ralph, “as Rory imagines, and they were journeying across this great ocean together, and supposing they lost sight of each other for a few minutes only, does it not seem probable they might swim about for forty or fifty years yet never meet again?”
“Oh, how vast the ocean is!” said Rory, almost solemnly. “I never felt it so before.”
“And yet,” said Allan, “there is One who can hold it in the hollow of His hand?”
“Watch, shorten sail.”
McBain had come on deck and given the order.
“The glass is going down,” he said to Allan, “and I don’t half like the look of the sea nor the whistle of the wind. We’ll have a dirty night, depend upon it.”
Chapter Eleven
The Storm – A Fearful Night – The Pirates – A Fight at Sea
“All hands shorten sail.”
The glass had not gone “tumbling down,” as sailors term it, which would have indicated a storm or hurricane in violence equal perhaps to the typhoons of lower latitudes, but it went down in a slow determined manner, as if it did not mean to rise again in a hurry, so McBain resolved to be prepared for a spell of nasty weather. The wind was now about south-west by south, but it did not blow steadily; it was gusty, not to say squally, and heavy seas began to roll in, the tops of which were cut off by the breeze, and dashed in foam and spray over the rigging and decks of the Snowbird.
It increased in force as the sun went down to something over half a gale, and now more sail was taken in and the storm-jib set. McBain was a cautious sailor, and left no more canvas on her than she could carry with comparative safety.
The Snowbird began to grow exceedingly lively. She seemed on good terms with herself, as the captain expressed it. All hands, fore and aft, had found the necessity of rigging out in oilskins and sou’-westers; the latter were bought at Lerwick, and were just the right sort for facing heavy weather in these seas. They were capacious enough, and had flannel-lined side-pieces, which came down over the ears and cheeks.
“I think I’ve made her pretty snug for the night,” said McBain, coming aft to where Allan and Rory stood on the weather side of the quarter-deck, holding on to the bulwarks to prevent themselves from falling. “How do you like it, boys? and where is Ralph?”
“Oh, we like it well enough,” said Rory, “but Ralph has gone below, and is now asleep on the sofa.”
“Sleepy is he?” said McBain, smiling; “well, that is just the nearest approach to sea-sickness. We won’t disturb him, and he’ll be all right and merry again to-morrow.”
“What do you think of the weather, captain?” asked Allan.
McBain gave one glance round at sea and sky, and a look aloft as if to see that everything was still right there, ere he replied, —
“The wind is fair, Allan, that’s all I can say, but we’ll have enough of it before morning; the only danger is meeting ice; it is often as far south as this, at this time of the year.”
The night began to fall even as he spoke, for great grey clouds had rolled up and hidden the sinking sun; sky and sea seemed to meet, and the horizon was everywhere close aboard of them. The motion of the Snowbird was an unpleasant jerky one; she pitched sharply into the hollows and as quickly rose again; she took little water on board, but what little she did ship, made decks and rigging wet and slippery. Presently both Allan and Rory were advised to go below for the night, and feeling the same strange sleepiness stealing over them that had overcome Ralph, they made a bolt for the companion. Allan succeeded in fetching it at once, and when half-way down he stopped to laugh at Rory, who was rolling porpoise-fashion in the lee scuppers. But Rory was more successful in his next attempt. In the saloon they found Ralph sound enough and snoring, and Peter, the steward, staggering in through the doorway with the supper. The lamp was lighted, and both that and the swing-tables were apparently trying to jump out of their gymbals, and go tumbling down upon Ralph’s prostrate form. In fact everything seemed awry, and the table and chairs were jerking about anyhow, and, as Rory said, “making as much creaking as fifty pairs of new boots.”
“Ah! Peter, you’re a jewel,” cried Rory, as the steward placed on the table, between the fiddle bars, a delicious lobster salad and two cups of fragrant coffee. “Yes, Peter,” continued Rory, “it’s a jewel you are entirely; there isn’t a man that ever I knew, Peter, could beat ye at making a salad. And it isn’t blarney either that I’m trying to put upon you.”
With supper the sleepy feeling passed away, and Rory said he felt like a giant refreshed, only not quite so tall.
“Bring my dear old fiddle, Peter,” he cried, “like a good soul. This is just the night for music.”
He played and Allan read for two hours at least, both steadying themselves as best they could at the weather side of the table; then they wakened Ralph, and all three turned in for the night and were soon fast asleep.
It was early summer, and Ralph, so he thought in his dream, was reclining, book in hand, on a sweet wild-thyme-scented green bank in Glentroom. A blue sky was reflected from the broad bosom of the lake, the green was on the birch, the milk-white flowers on the thorn, and the feathery larch-trees were tasselled with crimson; bees went droning from wild flower to wild flower, and the woodlands resounded with the music of a thousand joyous birds.
Ding-dong, ding-dong!
“It is the first dinner-bell from the Castle of Arrandoon,” said Ralph to himself; “Allan and his sister will be waiting, I must hurry home.”
Ding-dong, ding-dong-ding!
Ralph was wide awake now, and sitting up in his little bed. It was all dark; it must be midnight, he thought, or long past.
Ding-dong, ding-dong-ding again, followed by a terrible rush of water and a quivering of the vessel, the like of which he had never known before.
Ding, ding, ding! It was the seas breaking over the Snowbird and ringing her bell.
“What an awakening!” thought poor Ralph, and he shivered as he listened, partly with cold and partly, it must be confessed, with an undefinable feeling of alarm. And no wonder!
It was, indeed, a fearful night!
The gale had burst upon them in all its fury, and, well prepared though she was aloft to contend with it, it would require all the vessel’s powers of endurance and all the skill of the manly hearts on board of her, to bring her safely through it. Every time a sea struck her it sounded below like a dull, heavy thud; it stopped her way for a moment or two. It was then she quivered from stem to stern, like some creature in agony, and Ralph could hear the water washing about the decks overhead and pouring down below. The seas, striking the ship, gave him the idea of blows from something soft but terribly strong, and, ridiculous though it may seem, for the life of him Ralph could not help thinking of the bolster fights of the days of his boyhood. What other sounds did he hear? The constant and incessant creaking of the yacht’s timbers, the rattle of the rudder chains, and, high over all, the roar of the tempest in the rigging aloft. In the lull of the gale every now and then, he could hear the trampling of feet and voices – voices giving and voices answering words of command.
“Starboard a little! Steady?”
“Starboard it is, sir. Steady!”
“Hard down!”
“Hurrsh-sh!” A terrible sea seemed here to have struck her; the din below was increased to a fearful extent by the smashing of crockery and rattling of furniture and fittings.
“Another man to the wheel! Steady as you go. Steady.”
Then there was a sound like a dreadful explosion, with a kind of grating noise, followed by a rattling as if a thousand men were volley-firing overhead; meanwhile the good ship heeled over as if she never would right again. It was a sail rent into ribbons!
“I can’t stand this!” said Ralph, aloud. “Up I must get, and see if Allan and Rory be awake. They must be.”
Getting out of bed he discovered was a very simple proceeding, for he had no sooner begun the operation than he found himself sprawling on the deck. The floor was flooded, and everything was chaos. Feeling for his clothes, he could distinguish books by the dozen, a drawer, a camp-stool, and a broken glass. At last he managed to find a dressing-gown, and also his way along to the saloon. Here a lamp was burning, and here were Allan and Rory both, and the steward as well.
All three were somewhat pale. They were simply waiting – but waiting for what? They themselves could hardly have told you, but at that time something told everyone in the saloon the danger was very great indeed.
On deck McBain and his men were fighting the seas; two hands were at the wheel, and it needed all their strength at times to keep the vessel’s head in the right direction, and save her from broaching-to. In the pale glimmer of the sheet lightning every rope and block and stay could at one moment be seen, and the wet, shining decks, and the men clustering in twos and threes, lashed to masts or clinging to ropes to save themselves from destruction. Next moment the decks would be one mass of seething foam. It was by the lightning’s flash, however, or the pale gleam of the breaking waves, and by these alone, that McBain could guide his vessel safely through this awful tempest.
So speedily had the gale increased to almost a hurricane, that there was no time to batten down; but with the first glimpse of dawn the wind seemed to abate, and no time was lost in getting tarpaulins nailed down, and only the fore companion was left partially unprotected for communication between decks.
Soon after the captain came below, looking, in his wet and shining oilskins, like some curious sea-monster, for there was hardly a bit of his face to be seen. “What!” he cried, “you boys all up?”
“Indeed,” said Rory, who was nearly always the first to speak, “we thought it was down we soon would all be instead of up?”
The captain laughed, and applied himself with rare zest to the coffee and sandwiches the steward placed before him. “Don’t give us cups at breakfast to-morrow, Peter,” he said, “but the tin mugs; we’re going to have some days of this weather. And now, boys, I’m going to have a caulk for an hour. You had better follow my example; you will be drier in bed, and, I believe, warmer too.”
Breakfast next day was far from a comfortable meal. The gale still continued, though to a far less extent, and the fire in the galley had been drowned out the night before, and was not yet re-lit. But every one was cheerful.
“Better,” said McBain, “is a cold sardine and a bit of ship biscuit where love is, than roast beef and – ”
“Roast beef and botheration!” said Rory, helping him out.
“That’s it! Thank ye,” said McBain. “And now, who is going on deck to have a look at the sea?”
“Ha! what a scene is here!” said Allan, looking around him, as he clung to the weather rail.
Well might he quote Walter Scott. The green seas were higher than the maintop, their foaming, curling tops threatening to engulf the yacht every minute.
“I may tell you, my boys,” said McBain, grasping a stay and swaying to and fro like a drunken man, “that if the Snowbird weren’t the best little ship that ever floated, she couldn’t have stood the storm of last night. And look yonder, that is all the damage.”
From near her bows, aft as far as the mizen-mast, the bulwarks were smashed and torn by the force of the waves.
“We have two men hurt, but not severely, and the pump’s at work, but only to clear her of the drop of water she shipped; and we’ll soon mend the bulwarks.”
All that day and all the next night the gale continued to blow, and it was anything but comfortable or pleasant below; but the morning of the third day broke brightly enough, albeit the wind had forged round and was now coming from the west; but McBain did not mind that.
“We made such a roaring spin during the gale,” he said, “although scudding under nearly bare poles, that we can afford to slacken speed a little now.”
The sea was still angry and choppy, but all things considered the Snowbird made goodly way.
The forenoon was spent in making good repairs and in getting up the crow’s-nest, a barrel of large dimensions, which in all Greenland-going ships is hoisted and made fast, as high as high can be, namely, alongside the main truck. A comfortable place enough is this crow’s-nest when you get there, but you need a sailor’s head to reach it, for at the main-top-gallant crosstrees the rattlins leave you, and you have a nasty corner to turn, round to a Jacob’s-ladder, up which you must scramble, spider fashion, and enter the nest from under. You need a sailor’s head to reach it and a sailor’s heart to remain there, for if there is any sea on at all, the swinging and swaying about is enough to turn any landsman sick and giddy.
Hardly was the crow’s-nest in position when the look-out man hailed the deck below.
“A vessel in sight, sir.”
Here was some excitement, anyhow.
“Where away?” bawled the captain.
