Now the crow’s nest or look-out barrel was hoisted at the main-truck.
Harry astonished the second mate, and every one who saw him, by getting up to this giddy altitude the very second day.
The captain had been up there for hours and sang down for a cup of coffee.
The steward was too much of a landsman to venture, so Harry volunteered.
“My sonny,” said Wilson, “you’ll break your neck.”
“I’ve climbed trees as tall as that in Benbuie forest,” was Harry’s reply.
The warm coffee was put in a tin bottle, and up Harry spun with it. Hand over hand he went with all the agility of a monkey.
He sat in the nest till the captain had finished. Sat delightedly too, for the sea-scape, visible all around, was splendid, and he had a feeling that he was flying in the air with no ship beneath him whatever, as happy and free as the wild sea-birds that were whirling and screaming around him in the sky. The lovely sea-gulls, the malleys, the dusky skuas, and the snow-white sea-swallows—they charmed Harry beyond measure.
But a fierce gale of wind blew from the north-east, and lying to, the Inuita was drifted away off from the ice and far, far out of her course.