“Yes, I’ll take care,” replied Steve; and the captain made no reference to the last ascent, but walked away.
“You’ll remember your promise, Johannes?” said Steve after a few minutes.
“Oh yes, sir; never fear. Only give me the chance, and you shall harpoon a white whale and catch your fish.”
But that chance did not seem as if it would come, as the Hvalross sailed on over a calm sea day after day, the wind serving well, and the coal-bunkers remaining well charged ready for the days when the cold weather was returning—that was, if they had not already achieved their aim.
Here and there, as they kept along a mile or so from the floe, it began to show signs of breaking up, for at times loose fields of many acres in extent were passed, and at others detached fragments, imperceptibly gliding southward to dissolve slowly from the combined influence of the sunshine and the warmer sea into which they drifted.
“I say, Mr Handscombe,” said Steve one evening, when the sun in the north-west was shining with a softened radiance which turned the distant ice-floe into gold, “isn’t this getting to be a little tame and—and—”
“Monotonous?” said the doctor, finishing the boy’s sentence, for he had begun to hesitate.
“Yes, I meant something of that kind. I thought we were going to have all kinds of adventures, and it’s always blue sea and the ice away there to the left.”
“Oh, I see,” said the doctor; “you want a bear every day, with a bit of whale-fishing, being lost in the mist, and a few wrecks discovered thrown in.”
“No, I don’t,” said the lad pettishly; “but I don’t want to be always sailing along like this, doing nothing. If you go up in the crow’s-nest there’s ice and sun, and if you stop on deck it’s always the same. I want to be doing something. Look at Skeny here, growing quite fat.”