Captain Talbot had told Duncan that he had made the Flora M'Vayne as sweet as a nut, and certainly he had done so. No one to walk her decks could ever have guessed she had been a greasy, grimy blubber-hunter not so long ago.
Why, everything on deck looked as bright and as clean as a brand-new sovereign. The quarter-deck was as white as wheaten straw, the binnacle was an ornament, that would have looked excellently well in the best of drawing-rooms. The brass and hard-wood work were as bright as silver, every rope's end was coiled on deck, as if the barque had been an old-fashioned man-o'-war, and the men were all suitably dressed and tidy. The bo's'n was a most particular man, and, although some men chewed tobacco, to have expectorated anywhere on deck, would have been an offence for which a rope's-ending would be well merited.
The galley was of the newest type; so, too, was the donkey engine, and this would be used at sea when very far from land for the purpose of condensing water.
All told, the mustered crew were eight-and-thirty. The men forward had been picked by Talbot himself, and every one of them had been to the Arctic regions more than once.
They were therefore good ice-men, and neither frost nor cold was likely to have any terrors for them. Nor the great green waves of far southern lands, that somehow always sing in the frosty air as they sweep past a vessel's sides.
But there was something else on board which I should draw especial attention to, and this was nothing less than a huge balloon. It was not filled, of course, but the means to inflate it were all on board, and having reached the great Antarctic ice-wall or barrier, the captain meant to make an aërial voyage of discovery, farther to the south than any traveller had ever been before.
There is nothing I love better than acts of daring and wild adventure, and Talbot was certainly to be commended on this score.
His balloon was certainly not anything like the size of Andrée's, yet it was capable of rising and floating for an indefinite period with three men, and provisions for as many months.
A special house had been built for this great uninflated balloon between the fore and main masts, and on each side, bottom upwards, lay the whalers, or boats with bows at each end, and steered by an oar only. These were to be used in the fishery.
The ship's ballast was water-filled tanks, and tanks laden with coals. But Talbot hoped to return to Scottish or English shores with ballast of quite a different sort, and better paying--oil, to wit.