“Bother your misters,” said the old trapper; “I’m Seth, simply Seth.”
“Well, Seth,” said Stevenson, “see here, I can fix you in a brace of shakes; you ain’t much more’n a yard taller than me. Come below, Methus—ahem! Seth. Mind your hat. It would be a pity to crush that, you know.”
When Seth appeared on deck again, rigged out in a suit of Stevenson’s, albeit his legs stuck rather far through their covering, and his long bony wrists were nicely displayed, it must be confessed that he did look a little less remarkable.
Where was Seth to sleep at night? Was he to be a cabin passenger? Nay, Seth himself decided the matter by simply taking the big mastiff in his arms, and lying down on a skin in front of the galley-fire.
As for the dog himself, he began to improve in condition from the very day he came on board, and before he was a week at sea he was positively getting fat. But the Yankee trapper remained as lanky as ever. Do not think, however, that honest Seth was of no service on board; old as he was, he proved a very useful fellow. He assisted the cook, the cooper, and the sailmaker all in turns; and when he was not assisting them he was squatting on deck, making and mending fishing-tackle, and busking fishhooks with feathers, to make them represent flies.
The Snowbird had now got so far into the northern and western bays that, summer although it was, the weather was far from warm, but it continued fine. Immense snow-clad pieces of ice were to be seen daily, sometimes even hourly, and the yacht often sailed so closely to them that the very blood and marrow of the onlookers felt as if suddenly frozen into ice itself.
One morning a berg was reached larger than any they had yet seen, and the vessel had to alter her course considerably in order to avoid it. To all appearance it was an island in the midst of the dark sea, and quite an hour elapsed ere it was rounded, and the ship could again be kept away on the right tack. Hardly had she been put so, when,—
“A sail!” was the shout from the crow’s-nest—“a sail on the weather bow.”
Captain McBain went aloft himself to have a look at her, the yacht in the meantime being kept close to the wind. When he came down Rory and Allan went eagerly to meet him.
“What is she?” said the former. “Our old friend the pirate?”