“Then every one will be disappointed,” said the doctor shortly. “If I’m to be drowned, it shall be from the deck. I’m not going to be battened down under hatches, nor you neither, eh?”
“No, I shall stop on deck,” said Steve stoutly. “How dark it’s getting!”
“Yes, my lad. It looks very beautiful in the bright sunshine, with the ice and snow glittering; but Nature certainly seems to have drawn her line up here in the north, to show us that this part of the world was never meant for ordinary human habitation. If ever the North Pole is reached it will only be a scientific feat, and no valuable result can follow for enterprising man. Whew!” he added with a shiver; “did you feel that?”
For an icy puff of wind struck them suddenly and then passed on, leaving the air as calm as it was before its coming.
“No one could help feeling it,” said Steve, buttoning his mackintosh tightly.
“Part of the advance-guard of the storm, my lad. Yes, we’re going to have it soon. Let’s see, you thought one day that it was horribly hot down below, didn’t you?”
Steve nodded.
“I’m thinking that we shall be glad to go down and visit the engine-room, and not be above turning stokers.”
Another icy blast put an end to the doctor’s remarks; and as it passed on toward the south, after making the ship heel over and then race onward, the captain gave sharp orders for reducing the small amount of sail even more, Johannes giving one of his fellow-Norsemen a satisfied nod of the head, which Steve read to mean:
“All right; he knows his business.”