“That’s good,” said the doctor. “That’s scientific,” and he stood rubbing his hands while I made a slow match; connected it; lit it; and then we all stood back, till, with a loud bang, the charge exploded, lifting the block of ice up five or six feet, and then, in place of splitting it in two as I meant, it came down whole, and literally fell into powder.
“I say, don’t do that!” said a thick voice, and there, to our utter astonishment, sat among the broken ice, a heavy-looking, Dutch-built sailor, staring round, and yawning. “I’d have got up, if you had called me,” he continued, “without all that row.”
“How did you get there?” said the doctor.
“There? Where?” said the Dutchman.
“In that block of ice,” said the doctor.
“Stuff about your block of ice,” said the Dutchman. “I lay down to sleep last night on the snow, while our lads were trying for seal, off Greenland. But I’ll tell you all about it. Haven’t seen them, I suppose?”
“No,” said Bostock, winking at us, “we haven’t.”
“They’ll be here directly, I dare say, when they miss me,” said the Dutchman.
“I say, matey,” said Binny Scudds, “we’ve ’bout lost our reckoning. What’s to-day?”
“To-day,” said the Dutchman; “to-day’s the twenty-fourth of July, eighteen hundred and forty-two.”