The conversation concerning the whale was renewed after dinner that evening, the mate and Mr Stevenson having been, as was usual when anything extra was on the tapis, invited to partake of that meal.
Since they left the bay the mate had been unusually silent; he had been thinking, and now his thoughts took the form of speech. He spoke slowly, and with many a pause, as one speaks who well weighs his words, toying with his coffee as he did so, and often changing the position of the cup. Indeed, it was the cup he seemed to be addressing when he did speak.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “as man and boy, as harpooner, second officer, or mate, I have been back and fore to Greenland for little less than twenty years. I’ve been shipwrecked a time or two, you may easily guess, and I’ve come through many a strange danger in the wild, mysterious regions around the Pole. But it is not of these things I would now speak, it is about the last sad affair—my poor dear ship Trefoil, whose charred ribs lie deep in the Arctic Ocean. Oh, gentlemen! oh, men! that was a sad blow to me. Had we been a full ship we would have been home ere now, and I would have been wedded to one of the sweetest girls in all England. Now she is mourning for me as for one dead. But blessed be our great Protector that sent the Snowbird to our assistance in our dire extremity! Where, now, would we—the survivors of the Trefoil—have been else? Our fate would have been more terrible, than the fate of those that went down in that doomed ship.
“I can assure you, my dear friends,” he continued, “I have felt very grateful, and have longed for some way of showing that gratitude. I can never prove it sufficiently. But I have a suggestion to make.”
“Well, we are willing to hear it,” said McBain; “but really, sir, you owe us no gratitude, we only did our duty.”
“That ‘fish,’” said the mate—“what do you reckon its value to be?”
“I know,” said McBain, smiling, “that if we could tow it along to London it would fetch a long price; but if we could tow an iceberg there about ten millions of people would come to see it?”
“How romantic that would be?” said Rory; “and fancy the Union Jack floating proudly from the top of it!”
“Charge them a shilling a head,” said Allan, “and land 500,000 pounds!”
“And spoil the romance!” said our boy-bard.