The saloon was long and comfortable, though there was nothing of the boudoir about it. Claude himself had seen to everything personally. It was a very brilliant and select little party that assembled on deck about an hour afterwards. The élite, or rather the literary élite, of the city had come to wish the Icebear “God-speed?”
“What am I to do with all these flowers, sir?” the steward asked that same afternoon, when he got a word with the captain.
“Keep the choicest for the saloon,” was the reply, “and distribute the rest impartially for’ard.”
The Icebear was a lovely vessel, both fore and aft. She had been originally intended for a man-of-war to add to the navy of a far-off foreign potentate; but as the potentate in question did not, or could not, pay at the right moment, after waiting a goodly time the builder very properly put her in the market, and she was knocked down at a reasonable figure to our savant friends. About 1500 tons burden she was, low in bulwarks, flush in deck, with no great breadth of beam, though with more than the coffin-ships they often send poor Jack to sea in—things with no breadth at all to speak of, and that go over and down in a breeze, and in sea-way that a Peterhead herring-boat would laugh at. The Icebear was sturdy and strong all over, had good engines, good shaft and screw—she carried a spare one. Forward, the bows were of triple strength, moderately sharp, and shod with iron, to aid in boring through the ice.
She had three respectable masts, not heavy enough to weigh her over on her beam-ends if a squall struck her broadside, nor light enough to snap like pea-sticks if a puff came. When under sail the screw could be hoisted up into a kind of covered well, and the advantage of this will be found when the ship gets farther north.
Not a yard of canvas, not a fathom of cordage, that had not been examined and tested by Claude himself.
So much for the exterior. “Downstairs,” as landsmen would say, she was fitted up with a view to the utmost comfort. The men’s sleeping-berths forward and amidships were bunks and hammocks. The crew all told was ninety men, or would be when the vessel lay in at Kirkwall to ship additional hands.
Remember, there was no lumber of any kind on the upper deck. No unsightly cabins or rooms, only forward was the winch and then the steerage cabin, the capstan, the midship companion; and aft the saloon and cabin skylights and companions, the wheel-house and binnacle. I hope I am not talking Greek to my readers, who are probably not all nautical; but I wish it to be understood that the Icebear’s decks were most roomy, nothing at all unnecessary being built or even lying thereon—a deck on which you could waltz with delight, or fight without discomfort. The captain’s quarters, or rather his private room, occupied the after-part of the ship under the wheel-house, and was charmingly furnished, with a splendid stove, warm, soft carpets, a lounge, easy-chairs, a swing-cot, a library of choice books, and two ports that looked out over the sea. There, then I what more would you have in a private room afloat? and, mind you, it was the whole width of the ship. It had a private staircase. But the wardroom, or principal saloon, which lay under the quarter-deck, had cabins off it for the officers of the expedition, whose acquaintance we will make in good time.
It may be asked what were two ladies and four learned landsmen doing on board a ship bound for the icy North? It was a proposal of Mrs Hodson, to which her husband knew he dared not say nay, that the party we now see on board should accompany the vessel as far as Kirkwall, for what she called “the pleasure of a sail.”
Well, the pleasure of the sail really commenced before they were beyond the pier-head of Aberdeen. The long granite breakwater, which they were steaming past, was crowded with people, and, greatly to Mrs Hodson’s delight, a lusty shore-porter sprang up to the top of a parapet and, commanding silence by a wave of his arm, proposed “Three cheers for the two gallant ladies, who were sailing away to the North Pole never to return.”