When any one did, it was when the breeze slackened a bit, or blew stiffer, or changed its course a point or two, or did any one of the score of things that the wind that wafts a ship along is constantly doing.
The captain walked all round the ship about eight bells, and found everything taut and trim and clear, and no complaints.
The second and third officers had been with Claude before for many voyages. The surgeon was a man of over forty, and as grey as a badger. It was not years alone that had changed the colour of his hair, however, but a lifetime of abstruse study. His studies had been of a very mixed nature—better call him a scientist at once and be done with it; but he was a musician and poet also. By the way, every naturalist is a poet, whether he writes or not; for true poetry consists, not in writing verses, but in being and in feeling yourself part and parcel of all the life and loveliness around you, of loving all things and all creatures, and thus, unwittingly it may be, worshipping in the truest Way the great Being who made them.
But the surgeon’s character will come out as we go on in our story; suffice it to say here that although Claude had known him but a very few months, he already liked and respected him very much.
Claude felt happy and contented in having so good a crew, and officers he could trust by night or day. For though I may have seemed in my last chapter to be sneering at good Professor Hodson and his brother savants, they really were men who had the interests of science at heart, and this ship was going on no insignificant errand to the land of the snow bear.
The sea got up towards evening, and sail was taken in; and as the breeze still freshened, still more sail, and she was practically made snug for the night.
Before leaving Aberdeen—some days indeed—Claude had written to his mother, filially and affectionately bidding her good-bye. Thus far he had bent his pride; yes, and had she asked him to come home for a day—well, perhaps he would have thrown all his pride to the winds and obeyed.
But the time flew by, and there came no reply of any kind, and Claude was sad About an hour before he sailed, a telegram was put into his hand. It was brief, thus—
“Lady Alwyn wishes her son well.”
So far the proud Lady of the Towers had melted. Claude put the telegram in his Bible. It was something precious, for he could read between the words. So he was happy.