Mr. Curtis was second in command, and belonged to the British Royal Navy. He was a young fellow of barely six and twenty, and with all the dash and go your true-born Englishman and sailor always possesses. From the first he and Ingomar were the greatest friends.
The crew were all tried men, Arctic or icemen, as they are called—English, Scots, Finns, and Norwegians.
“Be good to mother,” was Ingomar’s very last postscript to Sissie. “Don’t believe me dead whatever you hear till thrice twelve months are past and gone.”
Poor Ingomar, he was nothing if not romantic!
They sailed, those two ships, both upon the same day from a port in the English Channel, but with so little fuss, and so little newspaper reporting, that hardly anybody save the nearest and dearest relatives of officers and crew witnessed their departure.
It was not until they were out and away leagues and leagues from the chalky cliffs of England, not indeed until the August sun had set, that Ingomar, as he stood on the quarter-deck of the sturdy Walrus, heaved a sigh of relief, and turned to shake hands with bold Mayne Brace.
“Thank God, captain,” he said, “the trouble, the worry, the fuss, is over at last. How soundly I shall sleep to-night!”
The skipper laughed as he rubbed his hands in glee.
“And now,” he said, “’tis do or die.”