“Ha!” said Douglas, “you’re laughing, are you? Well, your watch comes on at four in the morning. There won’t be much laughing then, lad. How delightful the warm bed will seem when—”
“There, there, Douglas, pray don’t bring your imagination to bear on it. It will be bad enough without that.”
The two now walked up and down together, only stopping occasionally to gaze at the sky.
There was little pleasure in looking weatherward, however, only a clear sky there now, with the jagged waves for an uneven shifting horizon, but where the sun had gone down the view was inexpressibly lovely. The background beneath was saturnine red, shading into a yellow-green, and higher up into a dark blue, and yonder shone a solitary star, one glance at which never failed to carry our sailors’ thoughts homeward.
Now something over three years had elapsed since the Gloaming Star sailed away from the Clyde, since the wild Arran hills were last seen in the sunset’s rays, and the rocky coast of this romantic island had grown hazy and faint, and faded at last from view.
Years of wandering and adventure they had been, too—years during which many a gale had been weathered, here and there in many lands, and many a difficulty boldly faced and overcome.
As our two heroes, Leonard and Douglas, walk up and down the deck, and the wind blows loud and keen from off the Antarctic ice, I will try to recount a few of those adventures, though to tell them all would be impossible. I will but dip into their logs, and read you off the entries on a few of the leaves thereof.
Opening the Log at Random.
I open the log at random, as it were, and first and foremost I find the wanderers—where? Why, among the Rocky Mountains. The Gloaming Star is safe and sound in New York harbour, under the charge of no less a personage than Rory O’Reilly himself, who is second mate of her.
To cross the vast stretch of country that lies between the Atlantic Ocean and this wild mountain range was in those days a daring deed in itself. As long as they were in the midst of comparative civilisation they were safe, but this once left behind, with only the rolling prairie in front of them, hills, glens, woods, and forests, and a network of streams, the danger was such that many a brave man would have shrunk therefrom.