“Yes, ’twere wonderful snug an’ fine, but I finds it a rare sight better afloat, an’ s’uthard bound.”
“Do you know, Dan, it gives me a sort of scarey feeling to think we’re out here alone in this little boat when there’s not another boat in sight, and likely there isn’t another within hundreds of miles of us, unless it’s the North Star; and we know that no one lives on the land. It’s a queer sort of feeling—nothing but a great big wilderness everywhere, and just us in it. But I’m glad to be here. I wonder what there is below that point and over the hill?”
“’Tis a wonderful bleak country, I’m thinkin’, an’ I’m wishin’ we were knowin’ where th’ fur traders is, an’ where we’re goin’.” Dan produced his harmonica as he spoke, drew it across his sleeve, and putting it to his lips blew a chord or two.
“It’s because we don’t know, I guess, and the uncertainty about it, that makes it interesting to me. I feel like an explorer. It’s simply great to sail along and wonder all the time what we’ll see next, and no way of finding out till we get there. That makes it exciting and romantic.”
“I don’t know as ’tis very exciting,” said Dan, removing the harmonica from his lips, “but ’tis a wonderful sight better ’n stayin’ around camp, with winter nigh, an’ ’t would be better yet if th’ ship came cruisin’ along t’ pick us up—which she won’t, as th’ ice sure drove she out.”
With this, and as if to dismiss the subject, he struck up one of his favorite tunes, playing softly, and ceasing only long enough to say to Paul: “A bit t’ port. That’s it, steady.”
The morning air was crisp and frosty. The sun illumined the eastern heavens in a blaze of wondrous colors, and presently raised his face above the glistening sea. Even the bleak coast, austere and rugged, possessed a unique grandeur and compelling beauty. The wind sprang up with the rising sun, and the little boat bowled along at a good speed, upon a gentle swell. Now and again Dan would trim the sail, and give an instruction to Paul, “Port lee a bit,” or “Starb’rd a bit,” and return to his music.
Paul was thinking of home, of his mother and father, and his homecoming—some time. He had no doubt that he and Dan would extricate themselves from the wilderness, for he had grown to have unbounded faith in Dan’s resourcefulness and ingenuity. He wondered what his parents would say, when Mr. Remington returned without him, if Dan’s assurance that the ship could never have remained in the face of the ice were correct.
While he realized and regretted the anxiety his absence would cause his parents, it did not occur to him that any one would believe that he and Dan were drowned. He believed that his father would send a vessel for them when the ice passed out of Hudson Bay the following summer, and that in the meantime he and Dan would be quite comfortable at some trading post which they should presently find.