"You don't say so!"
"Yes, sir. But we've set it; and it's doing well, I think."
"Well, you must have been short-handed here!" cried Donovan.
"Bet you, we have been! Had to have Palmleaf on deck half the time. We've made quite a sailor of him."
We all praised the darky. Even Wade cried, "Well done, old snowball! How's that under your wool?"
"I tinks," said the negro, grinning all over, "dat dis am a bery j'yful 'casion!"
"So 'tis!"
"But how far did they chase you?" Raed inquired.
"Clean out into the Atlantic," replied Capt. Mazard. "I should have given them a circular race about that ice-island where we were when 'The Rosamond' fired into us; but the tide has broken up the ice there now. We've come back just as quick as we could. But how have you fared? Why, I've had dismal fears of finding only one or two of you alive, devouring the bodies of the rest."
We thereupon gave the captain a brief account of our sojourn on the island, and how we had managed the Huskies.