“I shall be so pleased,” said the mate.
This expedition consisted of three guns—McBain himself, Allan, and the mate of the Trefoil.
There were still one or two bears prowling around the spot where the dead leviathan lay, but they seemed to scent danger from afar, and made off as soon as the expedition hove in sight. Probably they remembered the events of yesterday, and cared not to renew so unequal a combat.
The mate was evidently a man of business, for no sooner had they got on to the ice alongside the whale, than he proceeded to open a small parcel he carried, and to extract therefrom a pair of spiked sandals.
“I’m going on board of her,” he said to McBain, with a quiet smile.
Next moment, pole in hand, he was walking about on top of the dead leviathan, probing here and probing there with as much coolness as though he had been a fanner taking stock in a patch of potatoes.
He smiled as he jumped on shore again.
“That is what doctors would call a post-mortem examination,” said McBain, smiling too. “Now, sir, can you tell us the cause of death?”
“Oh! bother the cause of death,” said the mate, laughing, as he stooped down to undo his sandals. “Do you think I came all this way to ascertain the cause of death in a dead fish? But if you really want to know, I’ll tell you. You see from the state of the ice there has been a heavy swell on here, and the ice has been knocked about anyhow; that shows there has been a gale away out at sea. Well then, the fish,”—here the mate poked his stick at the whale’s ribs in a manner that, had the monster been alive, must have tickled him immensely—“this fish, look you, came nearer land to avoid the broken water, and ran ashore in the dark; he hadn’t got any steam, you know, to help him to back astern, and he couldn’t hoist sail, so he had to be content to lie on his little stomach until—”
“Until death relieved him of his sufferings,” put in McBain.