Mr Lloyd gave one glance forward and smiled.
“Ay, sir,” he replied, “all ready for a buster; and many is the sneezer, sir, I’ve come through in these latitudes, and higher up North too.”
These officers were on the bridge.
This latter was not the great elevated deck you see on passenger steamers right amidships. No, the Icebear’s bridge was but a plank, comparatively speaking. Not more than three feet wide, with a rope railing at one side, and a brass one at the other, with a step-ladder leading up to it from the quarter-deck, for it was between the bulwarks near the mizzen mast.
The glass was going down, and the day was far spent. Already the sun’s rays were beginning to fall aslant the waves.
“Had we started sooner,” remarked the doctor, “we would have been farther off the land ere now.”
“True, my good Dr Barrett, true,” replied Claude; “but could we have done so?”
“It would certainly have been difficult I admit; but if anything short of a hurricane comes along we can face it, and the night is short.”
No, it had not been easy getting away from Reykjavik indeed. It so happens that the good people of that town are exceedingly hospitable, and it is a hospitality that comes straight away from the heart. So there had been a kind of farewell levée on board Claude’s ship, and as there happened to lie in the roadstead a French merchantman and a Danish man-of-war, and the officers from both attended it and talked much, this made matters worse—or better.
But down went the sun, and ugly and angry were his parting gleams. He sank in a coppery haze, which lit up all the sea between. He seemed to squint and to leer at our heroes as much as to say, “You’ll catch it before long; something’s brewing. Good night; I’m off to bed, for bed is the best place.”